Report
The scam the hotel industry will not talk about
Pierrefitte-es-Bois, France – Over 60 percent of travelers make their reservations online, but the tactics of the online hotel reservations and booking intermediaries often prevent them from booking direct with the hotel of their choice.
According to a new report, consumers are prevented from finding all the hotels in the city of their destination when they use a search engine, and the result is that many hotels are missed by consumers, while booking agents continue to reap high profits from their tactics.
The free report details the “dirty tricks” used by booking agents and hotel reservations web sites to control the travel consumer. It also explains how hotel managers and owners can quickly and easily regain lost Internet business that the booking agents are trying to take away.
“The Hotel Reservations Scam, and What to Do About It” is a free report authored by travel industry expert, Herman Thuy. It is offered online at http://www.Interbed.com.
Thuy is not alone in his warnings about the manipulations of search engines by the travel industry. The management of Ryanair (“Europe's favorite low cost airline”) in Nov. 2007 called online travel agents and booking intermediaries “the greatest deadwood, rip off middle-men and the costliest parasites in the travel industry.”
“Use a search engine the way travel consumers use it. Search for two words, your city and hotel. Your web site will not be on that first page because the scam artists control all those listings. Consumers cannot find you, and often do not even know your hotel exists at their next destination,” explained Thuy.
His claim was confirmed with searches for Paris hotels, Dublin hotels, Luxembourg hotels, and Rome hotels. Each showed a list of booking agent web sites with no individual hotels listed.
“Booking agents have the search engines rigged so that travelers will only find the agency web sites and will not find the sites for individual hotels. That way they capture most online reservations,” said Thuy.
The free report not only informs hotel owners and managers how they are being duped by the hotel reservations web sites, but also offers specific advice on how they can regain full control and recapture the business they have lost to the unscrupulous intermediaries they in fact no longer need.
theopenpress.com
Comments
Re your "hotel industry scam" article, I've always found this immensely frustrating. One way round it is, if I know the name of the hotel, I only ever enter the name of the hotel and city, without the word "hotel" (e.g. Plaza + Cannes). That way there is a greater chance of reaching the hotel you're trying to find, without being diverted to the big guy's booking engines.
Another frustrating trick is that they've got the whole world tied up. Try searching for a hotel in a lesser known country and the big guys' booking engines still come up. But enter them and they have no hotels in that country. In a non-virtual life that wld border on the illegal and contravene the Trades Descriptions Act: purporting to sell something you don't have.
Do they really gain business this way? Maybe, but they certianly lose their reputation and any residual customer good will ! The words "gain the whole world" and "lose your soul" spring to mind.
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