A group of Australian hotel and motel owners have urged consumers to book hotels directly with businesses, as travellers continue to flock to accommodation comparison websites.
The business owners said that the websites like Trivago, Wotif, Hotels.com and Agoda charged large commission fees, were difficult to deal with and could dominate online search rankings.
They also said while there were several booking websites, most of them were owned by two companies, Booking Holdings and the Expedia Group. Bendigo motel owner Charlie Loftus said even questioning policies of the websites could result in losses.
Mr Loftus said that can be a very dangerous thing to do, to identify your property and speak out against any of these sites because they have nasty little ways of dealing with agitators… just to drop them down their list and put them on the third page or fourth page of their site. Entrepreneur Dick Smith launched the “Book Direct” campaign in Adelaide this week. In a statement, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it was investigating issues in the online travel booking industry, including parity clauses — which generally require accommodation providers to offer their best price and availability to online travel sites — to see if further action was warranted to improve competition and business practices.
The accommodation providers with concerns about parity clauses can contact the ACCC.
Tags: Australia, Hotel
