...passive aggressive response to the guy in the front row (& the belated question)
At the end of this afternoon's session, at the #VRWS conference in beautiful Florence, I was beaten by the buzzer with the question I wanted to ask.
I had a "relatively short" question (quotation marks is a passive aggressive response to the guy in the front row who asked about a 10 min long question) :-( , so here is it now - belated and elaborated on....
The VR direct vs. OTA's conversation today reminded me of the OTA vs Suppliers distribution wars of the early 2000's! Only those discussion were not nearly as friendly as this one (though admittedly back then, they weren't drinking wine on stage).
Ok granted, there is certainly a big difference between the scale of vacation rental managers (VRM's) and the scale of large Hotel chains and Airline carriers. As a result of those tensions back then, hotels and airlines appear to have fought back in a number of ways, namely:
- Loyalty programs
- Best price guarantee
- Last room availability
- Airlines Alliance Groups
- Niche brands think: Marriott Residence Inn or Singapore's Scoot airline
- etc etc
So my question to the distinguished VRWS panel, and in particular to the VRM representatives; @RichardVaughton, @AlanEgan and @Marc Ribail is...
What can the VR industry learn from what the airlines and hotels did to fight back against the OTA's (if anything at all) or is it a forgone conclusion that up to 75% of vacation rental inventory will ultimately be sold on the big guys platforms?
Give me a few days and I'll be back to this one....travelling. But good good question
Leading Product Marketer driving revenue growth in vacation rentals industry
7 年I would say that hotels have been working with @Booking.com for 20 years and still have their own websites. Not planning to replace them. Multichannel strategy to find bookers where they are. Spend money on channels with the best return. Can be direct, can be OTA, you know your data batter than anyone.