Hotel Room Rates across Booking Channels
Abstract
10.1177/0010880405275112 From the Center Hotel Room Rates across Booking Channels O ne of the key issues facing hotel marketers is how to rationalize room rates and availability through the many distribution channels, particularly those using the Web. Some chains encour- age customers to book through their flag's Web site by offering "lowest price" poli- cies. I'd like to share with you some of the findings from a recent report published by the Center for Hospitality Research titled "It Pays to Shop Around: A Comparison of Hotel Room Rates and Availability across Booking Channels," which I wrote with Alexandra Failmezger. One purpose of our study was to find out the extent to which hotel chains room rates vary across the many distribution channels. To do this, we examined the rates and availability of rooms for four types of hotels in eighteen large U.S. markets across five booking channels. The distribution channels that we examined were the hotel flag's own Web site, the individual hotel's telephone-reservation desk, and three third-party sites: namely, Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity. Our final sample comprised 30 property-date combinations for the luxury segment, 35 for the upscale segment, and 36 for each of midmarket and budget