Losing control of your brand
First, we would like to clear out once again that we are aware that the OTAs is a great opportunity to attract more guests. The pros are very clear but there are a few negative things except for the high commission. One problem that the owners experience except for the high commissions is also the lack of control of the brand. If a guest books a double room on Booking.com and for some reason there have been a problem somewhere in the chain (which may not even be Bookings fault) the guest will probably blame your hotel for any problems, even those who are uncontrollable for you.
“Stealing” your guests
There is also a risk that guests that intend to book directly via your home page might end up booking at Hotels.com (or another OTA). If a customer googles your hotel and city name the first hits on google are very likely to be Hotels and Booking ads and the guest might very well click on the easiest option, which could be the sponsored top results. We will show you an example of how it looks when we google “hotel amber Luleå”. All of the first three results are ads that will direct the guest to high commission sites. Not a big difference for the guest but for you up to 20 % of the revenue could be lost.
How to avoid the dependence of the OTAs will be posted in the near future.
