Why hoteliers should not allow the OTAs to hijack their group business

The OTAs have been trying to enter the leisure group booking market for decades now. Traditionally, hoteliers have been reluctant to allow the OTAs to enter the lucrative group market, limiting their OTA exposure to the transient leisure and unmanaged business market.

Lately, more and more hoteliers are receiving group bookings from the OTAs that are disguised as individual reservations under the same guest name and with the typical OTA 24h cancellation policy. Some hotels end up getting 10 and more rooms for the same stay period and for the same booker.

Obviously, these reservations constitute a group booking, split into separate reservations, without adhering to all the hotel group policies, such as deposits, restrictions and cancellations.

The question is, should hoteliers allow OTA customers to?"trick the system"?and allow group bookings by enabling multiple reservations for same stay period by the same customer. The question of group reservations is more important than ever since group demand - both corporate and SMERF - is expected to bounce back in 2023.

Amadeus reports that group and business travel segments have steadily recovered in Q4 2022, with 4.3 million group room nights already booked for the first half of 2023. According to HotelAVE group demand should bounce in 2023 back to around 90% of pre-pandemic levels, but due to an estimated 5% YoY increase in group rate will push the performance past the 2019 levels.

Airlines do not allow group bookings via the OTAs. Period. Hoteliers should learn from the airlines how to protect this very lucrative business from third-party intermediaries.

Groups, even SMERFs and family reunion groups,?often require more than just plain rooms: use of meeting rooms/ gathering spaces, F+B, receptions and get-togethers, coffee breaks, activities, entertainment, audio-visual equipment, etc. A ton of details need to be ironed out, a ton of upsells can be done during the negotiation and booking process ONLY if this process is directly between the hotel and the group organizer.

If I were a hotelier today, I would not allow groups above a certain reasonable level to be booked via the OTAs ex. More than 3-4 rooms traveling together. I will enable a group booking engine like GroupSync Engage on my property website, create a group section with descriptive content about your group product, optimize it for SEO, and launch marketing campaign around it.

GroupSync by Groups360 was created so that hotels could offer direct booking of guest rooms and hotel meeting space, and is used by many independents, smaller, midsize and major brands like Accor, IHG, Hilton and Marriott.

And keep an eye on Reposite, a maker of software for travel agents and advisors, which wants to establish itself as?the definitive leisure group travel tool that fuels discovery and simplifies coordination for travel planners?by leveraging data to consolidate planning. Its supplier marketplace aids group planners in finding new hotel and other suppliers and receive proposals for their upcoming group trips.