| If you have found this web-site you will
probably be aware that there are thousands of web-sites where you can book
hotel rooms. The range of web-sites and the number of hotels on offer
has never been so great. To the uninitiated this
is bewildering and the temptation is to leave the world's
best travel tool - the Internet - well alone and revert
back to your familiar local travel agent.
This web-site attempts to unravel this confusion and assist you in
making a more informed selection of which Hotel Booking
Service to use.
The hotel industry sells rooms using a number of methods.
These range from directly to the public, block selling to
consolidators, partnering with other travel vendors
... just to name a few. It is imperative for hotels to fill as
many rooms as possible every night of the week. Hotels are high
labour and capital intensive businesses and need regular cash
flows to survive. They usually minimise their risk by bulk selling
rooms at heavily discount prices to wholesales (known as
consolidators in the industry).
Consolidators
then sell to travel agents and tour operators and now directly to
the public via the Internet.
Travel agents and the airlines
use one of a number of Global Distribution Systems (GDS) which
were first developed for airline seat reservations. Examples of GDSs are Apollo/Galileo, Amadeus, Sabre, and WorldSpan. They have
since expanded to include hotel reservations and car rentals. The
GDSs house about 50,000 hotels with a world-wide coverage, but
do not generally offer large discounts to the consumer.
Some of the GDS companies also
have their own web-sites where you can purchase any of their
services. Travelocity.com for example is Sabre's retail arm. These
sites are generally very comprehensive as they have had a lot of
money invested in their web-sites. Their prices are the same as
that available via travel agents and the airlines, but you can
usually do better from an independent consolidator or even the
hotel chain themselves.
To confuse things even more, some Consolidators utilise one or other of
the GDSs as well as their own negotiated rates as a consolidator
on their web-sites.
This makes them appear to have a very large spread of properties,
but in reality they may have only negotiated discounts on about
10% of the offered properties.
The traditional way holiday rooms
are sold is that special rates are negotiated between tour
wholesalers and hotels up to 18 months in advance. The wholesaler
then produces nice glossy brochures for the region of interest and
distributes them to travel agents. They need a shelf life of from
6-12 months. If you pick just about any travel brochure and
compare its prices with any of the Best Booking
Services you will find the brochures loose out virtually every
time. This is because prices are negotiated so far in advance,
there is a minimum of a two-tier commission system and there is an
inability to set prices to fit the short-term demands. In
short, if you want the best value hotel deals forget holiday
brochures and start using the Internet.
From the independent traveller's perspective,
you have a number of choices when looking at using the Internet to
purchase accommodation. You can:
- access a specific hotel's web-site directly
and book with them either on-line or via e-mail.
- access hotel-chain web-sites and book on-line.
- access GDS websites such as Travelocity.com
- access Internet Booking Services usually run
by Consolidators
- use "last-minute" hotel-booking sites for rooms
within the next couple of weeks
| Type |
Advantages |
Disadvantages |
| Booking directly with the hotel |
- One point of call.
- Can often be secured with a credit card but not charged till
arrival or departure. |
- Usually not the cheapest rate
available.
- Not always on-line and you may need to use e-mail back and
forwards a few times. |
| Booking via a chain web-site. |
- One point of call.
- Can be secured with a credit card but not charged till
arrival.
- Often good discounts for well in-advance bookings
-A few hotel chains offer last minute room deals to sell
excess room capacity at discounted prices, especially on the
weekends. |
- Usually not the cheapest rate
available, although some good deals are possible. |
|
Internet Consolidator |
- A consolidator has a
contracted number of rooms available.
- Rooms available up to about 2 months before required
date.
- A consolidator may have rooms even if the hotel says they
are full.
- Often the best prices |
- You are dealing with two (or
more) links in the chain.
- Timing is important as a consolidator only has a sub-set of
all rooms at any hotel.
- Many websites are actually re-labelled versions the same
consolidator site.
- Usually have to pay full price at time of booking. |
|
'Last-minute' web-sites |
- Typically the hotel discounts
prices regularly until they are gone.
- Typically the hotel has direct access to the web-site to
update prices and availability.
- Prices not dictated by a fixed contract price.
- Often the best prices |
- Opportunistic - rooms sell
out quickly.
- You are dealing usually with two links in the chain.
-Rooms available up to only about 2 weeks before date room
required.
- Usually have to pay full price at time of booking. |
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