Comments on: Is it best to Book on Hotel own website or a 3rd Party?

By: administrator

administrator — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:08:01 +0000

I would not think this would be price fixing. The Hotel would set their own price. All rate parity then does is give the same price for their Hotel to the 3rd party. Say for example was selling a room for €100. If they then gave the 3rd party the same room to sell for €110. Over a period of time people would move away from the 3rd parties. This would be good for Hotels but Hotels do not have the sales & marketing power major players such as Expedia have worlwide. If Hotels did not use 3rd parties their bookings would drop.

They sell a room for €100. After they take a cut the Hotel gets €75. The way the Hotel would see it is they may never have got this booking without the 3rd party?

Thanks for the feedback.

By: Catalogue Compare

Catalogue Compare — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:43:56 +0000

‘When a Hotel signs up with a 3rd party site say for example Hotels.com they agree to give rate parity. Rate parity means the Hotel must give at least the same price as the Hotel is selling on their website.’

I wonder if this could be described as price fixing?

By: Holger Haase

Holger Haase — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:54:32 +0000

Spot on. I recently went to make a booking for a hotel near Mallow in conjunction with a wedding. When I called they gave me a higher rate and referred me back to their website that had a cheaper rate and that was not run by them, so they had to also pay commission on that booking. All they had to do was match their Internet rate when I called and they could have saved on commission.