2011 will be the year of flash sales in travel, but not the way you think. Flash sales will take a different route in hotel marketing techniques Besides retail discount shopping websites, new start-ups have been launched for the hotel and travel industry. These websites work with the already popular loyalty programs where membership only acces creates the notion that rates are not published to the greater public.
We dare to differ on that opinion. Once they have created momentum and consumers are catching on, your guests will understand that besides offering €200 on your own websites, they can get better deals by subscribing to these online discount stores. They just have to wait and sit back for an offer to come out. Websites like Groupon and Guestmob are teaming up consumers to drive down prices at hotels by the so called value of volume. These new hospitality marketing concepts are not the case for hotels.
Heavy discounting as experienced with OTA’s over the past years will only lead to the erosion of value perception by the potential client. We will be trading down our own product value once more making it harder to demand and convert the rates we need and should sell our hotels at. Then there are websites which lower your rate through loyalty programs and rebates. They cut their commission to be more competitive. Hotels have to wage a war on these cash back or rebate systems to stay in control of their rates.
Indeed, 2011 will become a year of rate war. But not so much between hotel competitors, instead we are foreseeing a war between the hotels and their distributors. Hotels will become tougher on OTA to respect rate parity. Most importantly hotels will do so through their own website. Hotels will get more creative and break rate parity where and when needed for their own good. In 2011 Flash Sales will grow initially through the new ecommerce initiatives.
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