Are OTAs abusing their
power over B&Bs?
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B&B Association members and regular readers
know that we have been fighting your corner with
regulators, Government and the EU about the
extraordinary imbalance of power between a B&B
and the two giant OTA groups who have some 80%
of the market (Priceline group, who own Booking.
com, Kayak and many others; and Expedia, who
own Hotels.com, Trivago and many others).
We as B&Bs have no negotiation of terms with
these global giants - it is ‘take it or leave it’.
And what we have to ‘take’ often seems unfair.
Why do people book through the giant OTAs?
OTAs use their unrivalled financial firepower
to buy the top places on google searches (and
they force B&Bs to let them appear under the
B&B’s own name in google searches, so all clicks
on the B&Bs name yield commission to the OTA)
OTAs invent false discounts, to give
the impression that the room being
sold has been discounted by the OTA
when it has not (see p13)
OTAs force (using ‘rate parity”’
clauses) B&Bs to build the commission
demanded by the OTA into the B&B’s
room price, even where the B&B sells
directly to its own customer off its
own website – allowing the OTAs to
claim that they “always have the best
deals”.
This price claim (enforced by the
restrictive practice of ‘rate parity’)
and the false discounts clearly work:
surveys show that 85% of consumers
say they book with an OTA “to get the
best price”