Expedia plans to have 25,000 hotels in the company, favored by brand hotels

At present, 25,000 hotels have signed the Expedia Traveler Preference Program, including Hilton Global Hotel Group, Marriott Hotel and so on.

The hotel operators who participate in Expedia's "front-pay" platform program offer a positive assessment of the service, which allows guests to book the hotel room on Expedia, but does not pay until the customer has checked in at the hotel.

The Expedia site's payment options for JW Marriott Hotel, Los Angeles

The plan, launched last July, is the Expedia Traveler preference (Expedia Traveler Preference Scheme, ETP), because customers can choose whether to pay upfront on Expedia or when they arrive at a hotel. The plan was initially criticized by the hotel owners and asset management managers, as the program has increased the potential cost of additional training and credit card processing fees for hotel owners.

But earnings managers in line operations say the benefits of the plan outweigh any additional costs it may generate.

Andrea Stigliano, the reservation manager at the Houston Centre's historic Hotel The Lancaster, praised the program for allowing her team to have a better understanding of the guests before they reached the hotel. Prior to the implementation of the front desk pay, the hotel generally through the Expedia Direct-link platform to get the name of a forthcoming guest.

But when guests choose the "front-pay" model (which is also the choice of more than half of their guests on the day of their hotel), Expedia provides more information about the guests, such as how to contact them, Stigliano said.

"It helps you to get to know the guests better because we have more information about our guests than before." This gives us a chance to prepare them before they get here. Especially for the smaller hotels such as the Lancaster, we treat our guests like family, which is a good way to achieve differentiation. ”

Stigliano said the Lancaster Hotel has 93 rooms and is a family-run hotel that treats third parties as partners, especially Expedia.

"Expedia is an important brand and people trust the brand." "She says Expedia has helped them boost income and average daily prices through Expedia Traveler preference.

"Prior to this, customers never heard of our hotels, they saw our photos and good rates on Expedia and then they booked our hotel." ”

Stuart Harless, Revenue and reservation director at the Personality Hotel in San Francisco, said the Expedia ETP has increased the average price of its six hotels.

Harless said that San Francisco's March market downturn, each hotel has lowered prices to compete, but its diva hotels through the front desk pay plan to raise their average price of almost 4 dollars.

He predicts that the hotel will likely raise its average price to $7 after the summer, "although for me the workload will increase, about 10 minutes to process the Commission and other operations, and Expedia knows it, but for both sides this is a winning situation." ”

Brand Hotel recognition

Compared to brand-name hotels, Ota is usually able to gain more in the independent hotel, because independent hotels do not have the capacity of marketing and distribution systems like big brand hotels. So what is the reaction of branded hotels to ETP?

With its 38 hotels in the Equities hotel brand (the hotel has a proprietary management partnership with Marriott International), Revenue management Director Drew Salapka said he personally recognised the ETP because the plan gave customers what they wanted.

Drew Salapka said that if he could choose, he would prefer to keep the original prepaid way, with Expedia taking on this responsibility (handling guest payments), "but we live in a real world and we need to be a guest." ”

Salapka further that it has 16 hotels in the choice of Service property Management partnership with Marriott International and has already implemented the ETP program. The vast majority of Hampton Inn brands are in the process of being ready for implementation.

He believes Expedia is a strong partner and has a good reputation and position in the industry.

"The fact is that you need to pay a commission to Expedia, and I know that, too." But we also pay Commission to other Ota, you need to be effective inventory management, and OTA regional Marketing manager has a good relationship. Hotels are in trouble because they do not have good inventory management, so they will eventually be unable to load the amount of bookings from OTA. ”