The hotels market has seen an impressive growth as more and more people take their searches online.
The hotels market continues to benefit from the rise in online platforms for booking, according to a new report, which stated that the end of last year saw the number of people using them to book increase again.
Over the last couple of years, the rise of apps and optimized sites for smartphones has helped the number of bookings climb time and again, and according to the latest report from TravelClick, entitled the North American Distribution Review, this is a trend that continued late into 2014.
It said that a number of different channels have seen sizeable increases in the number of bookings they’ve received, including Online Travel Agents (OTAs), hotel websites (Brand.com) and global distribution systems (GDS) used by travel agents. This was true in the market for both individual business travelers (as opposed to companies) and the leisure traveler.
Throughout the final quarter of 2014, the OTA market saw the largest increase in activity out of all channels, with some 12.7 percent more bookings in this three-month period than in the same quarter a year earlier.
Hotels’ own websites saw an increase in the booking numbers amounting to some 6.8 per cent, while GDS room nights grew by nearly five percent. The strength of online channels was also pushed home by the fact there was a sizeable decrease of 5.3 percent in people calling hotels to book and 5.2 percent in walk-in reservations, meaning more people are using the internet to book their trips than ever before.
“These numbers reflect the trend that hoteliers are optimizing RevPAR through channel management and inventory allocation,” said John Hach, senior vice president, Global Product Management at TravelClick. “It is clear that hoteliers are maximizing their efforts where they can get the highest average daily rate (ADR), like through their own websites, dominant OTAs and the GDS channel. »
It is expected, TravelClick went on to say, that the number of bookings via online channels will also continue to rise during quarter one and quarter two of 2015.