Online hotel reservations are becoming a
very popular method for booking hotel rooms.
Travelers can book rooms from home by using
online security to protect their privacy and
financial information and by using several
online travel agents to compare prices and
facilities at different hotels.
Prior to the Internet, travelers could write,
telephone the hotel directly, or use a travel
agent to make a reservation. Nowadays, online
travel agents have pictures of hotels and
rooms, information on prices and deals, and
even information on local resorts. Many also
allow reviews of the traveler to be recorded
with the online travel agent.
Online hotel reservations are also helpful
for making last minute travel arrangements.
Hotels may drop the price of a room if some
rooms are still available. There are several
websites that specialize in searches for deals
on rooms.
Large hotel chains typically have direct
connections to the airline national distribution
systems. These in turn provide hotel information
directly to the hundreds of thousands of travel
agents that align themselves with one of these
systems. Individual hotels and small hotel
chains often cannot afford the expense of
these direct connections and turn to other
companies to provide the connections.
Several large online travel sites are, in
effect, travel agencies. These sites send
the hotels' information and rates downstream
to literally thousands of online travel sites,
most of which act as travel agents. They can
then receive commission payments from the
hotels for any business booked on their websites.
Lastly, people can book directly on an individual
hotel's website. An increasing number of hotels
are building their own websites to allow them
to market their hotels directly to consumers.
Non-franchise chain hotels require a "booking
engine" application to be attached to
their website to permit people to book rooms
in real time. One advantage of booking with
the hotel directly is the use of the hotel's
full cancellation policy as well as not needing
a deposit in most situations.
To improve the likelihood of filling rooms,
hotels tend to use several of the above systems.
The content on many hotel reservation systems
is becoming increasingly similar as more hotels
sign up to all the sites. Companies thus have
to either rely on specially negotiated rates
with the hotels and hotel chains or trust
in the influence of search engine rankings
to draw in customers.
The ultimate service provided by these companies
to the hotels and the online consumer is that
they provide a single database from which
all reservation sources draw immediate room
availability and rates. It is very important
that hotels integrate with all the supply
channels so that their guests are able to
make accurate online bookings.
