Parity Performance August 2015. Where does your city stand? – Europe

This is the second part of an exclusive seven-part series that takes a look at how top cities in various regions have performed in terms of rate parity. The first six parts will look at trends in each of the below regions:

• APAC
• EUROPE (This part)
• NORTH AMERICA
• MIDDLE EAST
• LATIN AMERICA
• OCEANIA

The last part of this series will feature an in-depth comparison between the performance of these six regions and examine the impact, if any, of rate parity being abolished in France.

Part 2: RateGain’s Top European Cities Parity Performance (August 2015)

Is a full-blown price war brewing in Europe with France abolishing rate parity (read France Rate Parity update here ) and other countries considering to follow suit? A look into where major cities in Europe stood in August in terms of rate parity gives a good sense of what we can expect in the near future.

The degree of rate parity observed for European hotels between their brand websites and theOTAs is at the lower end of the spectrum compared to what we saw for Asia last week (Read Asia report here). A whopping 83% of the rates across 3 to 5-star category hotels were not in parity compared to a mere 40% in Asia. Rome and Amsterdam seem to be the worst hit with only 5% of the rates in parity while Madrid is the most disciplined with 48% of rates in parity.

The trend of hotels being cheaper on the OTA sites in Europe dominates this report with 52% hotels in the 3-star category, 57% in the 4-star category and 50% in the 5-star category being cheaper on the OTA site VS 23%, 19% and 18% respectively being cheaper on the brand site.

The price war seems to be most prominent in Rome, Venice, Amsterdam and Barcelona where over 30% of the hotels are offering cheaper rates on their brand site.

Did you notice:

1. Unlike Asia, all three segments in Europe follow a standard trend in terms of the percentage of hotels being in parity, the percentage of hotels being cheaper on brand site and the percentage of hotels being cheaper on OTA site. Hence, there seems to be more predictability in Europe compared to Asia.
2. While Paris is holding tight in the 5-star segment, it seems to be immensely competitive in the 3-star and 4-star segment.
3. The 5-star category in Barcelona is the only segment where hotels dominate the market with fewer OTAs being cheaper. This does not occur in any other city in any category.

Read full article here >>> https://blog.rategain.com/parity-performance-europe-august-2015/