A research report previewed at a hotel industry conference on Wednesday posits that U.S. hotels lost US$2.5 billion by selling rooms through online travel agencies in 2010 instead of directly or on brand.com.
Finalized data for the study, conducted by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, STR Global and Tourism Economics, will be published in September. Online travel agencies, whose market share has grown steadily since the beginning of the past decade, accounted for 9.8% of room nights sold last year, according to STR.
However, the US$2.5 billion figure cited by the study does not include the costs of booking on brand.com or directly. Also, some analysts note that even with the middleman cost, online travel agencies are still putting heads in beds at hotels in a tough U.S. economy.
“First of all, the online travel agencies have proved they have some value to the hotel industry so we shouldn’t expect them to whither away,” said John Burns, president at Hospitality Technology Consulting. “We have to remember that the online travel agencies are our distributor by choice. It may be a poor choice, but it’s our choice.”
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