What Is Rate Shopper? 12 Best Hotel Rate Shopping Software in 2023

The one thing that any customer is concerned the most about is the price they have to pay to stay in a hotel. Not just hotels, but be it flights, cruises, or any other field, most customers put the price as a significant deciding factor that affects their decision.

So, to provide the customers with exactly what they are looking for and to make an informed price decision, the hotel industry relies heavily on hotel rate shopping tools.

Hotel price tracking solutions have not only just changed the overall scenario and working processes of the hotel industry but have made revenue generation and management much simpler over the years.

So, what exactly are these Hotel Rate Shopping and Market Intelligence tools? Let’s find out!!

What Are Hotel Rate Shopper & Market Intelligence Tools?

Rate Shopping is all about acquiring hotel rate intelligence by considering different options in terms of price in any industry. It helps you to get an understanding of the current market prices prevailing and thus accordingly helps you set up your pricing decisions. 

Similarly, Market Intelligence is the general understanding of any information relevant to your market so that one can make confident business strategy decisions. In addition to that, if you’re looking for solutions to improve work & operational performance for that hotel business intelligence tools are here for you.

It is important to have a whisk understanding of both terms in order to attain a competitive advantage in any field.

Hotel Rate Shopper and Market Intelligence Tools help in getting such essential information by aggregating major pointers from the hotel industry and presenting them in a single search. This has made the research process much simpler over the years and has been a game changer in the industry. 

Analytics is the bread and butter of hotel revenue management and the growth of any business which can be simplified using such tools.

It helps in segmenting customers, forecasting demand, determining optimal pricing, understanding market behavior, and core knowledge about customers.

Hotel Price Shopping helps business owners to make an informed price decision and accordingly set a successful revenue generation strategy. Before you invest your hard-earned money into a hotel rate shopper, don’t forget to check out must look for features of the hotel rate shopping tool.

Benefits Of Using Hotel Rate Shopping Tools For Travel Agencies

1. Increased Bookings and Revenue

As an online travel agency (OTA), your main goal is to provide your customers with the best possible hotel rates and an easy and convenient booking process. To help you to achieve your goal, these tools will become a game changer for your business.

Imagine you are an OTA with a website that features a wide range of hotels from around the world. Your customers rely on you to provide them with the best rates and options for their travel needs. Without using this tool, it can be difficult for you to know the best rates for each hotel in every location.

Now, imagine that you have hotel pricing data insights available to you. It will allow you to easily compare hotel pricing in every location around the globe.

You can see the rates that each hotel is offering on various OTAs and booking platforms, as well as the rates that your competitors are offering. 

Based on this information, you can give the best rates for your customers on your website.

By using these tools, OTAs can increase bookings and revenue by offering their customers the best available pricing and an easy and convenient booking process. 

This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, which translates to more bookings and revenue for the OTA.

2. Enhanced Reputation and Credibility

As an online travel agency (OTA), your reputation and credibility are crucial to your success. After all, if travelers don’t trust your website and the information you provide, they’re likely to go elsewhere and choose some other platform for their travel needs.

That’s where taking advantage of using hotel rate shopping tools becomes crucial.

Imagine: you’re an OTA with a website featuring a wide range of hotels from around the world. Without this tool, it can be tough to provide your customers with accurate and up-to-date hotel pricing information.

This can lead to frustration and mistrust from your customers, who may feel they’re not getting the best deal.

But with the incredible benefits of a rate shopping tool at your fingertips, you can get real-time updates on hotel pricing with the rate comparison feature. This makes it easy for travelers to see the best rates for each hotel and choose the one that’s the best fit for them.

By using this tool, OTAs can enhance their reputation and credibility by providing their customers with accurate and up-to-date hotel pricing information.

Further, this will increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, as travelers will appreciate the convenience and trustworthiness of your platform. 

And happy customers are likely to recommend your OTA to others, leading to more bookings and revenue for your business. 

3. Greater Convenience for Clients

As an online travel agency (OTA), your main goal is to provide your clients with the best possible support and convenience. And, to make it possible this tool works like a valuable asset for your business. 

Imagine: You are a hotelier who is listed on an OTA’s platform. And, on OTAs platforms, your pricing is way too low or high in comparison to other hotels or your actual rates. When you will notice this as a hotelier (client). How would it make you feel? Unquestionably, you will be frustrated as hell without having expected bookings & profit. If an OTA platform could know, what your and your competitor’s real-time accurate pricing is. You could enjoy the profit gained from the money you invested in the OTAs listing. This is how, as an OTA or hotel booking platform you can provide great convenience to your clients (hoteliers).

In short, for streamlining the pricing monitoring and displaying process without errors on OTAs and hotel booking platforms. Making rate monitoring solutions an integral part is crucial.

4. Time & Efforts Saving For Staff

As an online travel agency (OTA), your staff’s time and efforts are valuable resources that should be used wisely. This is where these tools come in to help save time and effort.

Imagine that you are an OTA with a website that features a wide range of hotels from around the world. Without using hotel pricing intelligence solutions, your staff must manually research and compare hotel rates on various OTAs and booking platforms. 

This can be a time-consuming and tedious task, taking away from other important tasks and responsibilities.

Taking advantage of hotel rate shopping tools allows your staff to easily and quickly compare hotel rates from various sources, saving them time and effort. 

They can quickly see the best rates for each hotel and make informed decisions about the rates to feature on your website.

So, now you have got aware of the advantages hotel rate shopper can bring to your business. Let’s have a look at the best rate shopping tools in the market.

Best Hotel Rate Shopper That Provides Accurate Market Analysis

To make your rate shopping for hotels easy, we have listed the 11 best hotel competitor rate shopping tools and companies that provide accurate market analysis.

Dive in to find your perfect fit.

1. Makcorps

MakCorps is one of the leading hotel API provider companies that provides hotel historical pricing & current pricing data via APIs from over 200 OTAs in a single GET request to travel agencies, companies, & hotel chains.

This hotel pricing API dynamically connects you to a robust hotel aggregator, which has been meticulously refined over 10 years. With a proprietary blend, the hotel aggregator API precisely maps hotel IDs from dozens of suppliers and routinely cleans that data for accuracy and quality.

To get precise information about Makcorps Pricing API, watch the video:

Pros – 

• Lower Prices and discounts will help in increasing the number of bookings. MackCorps Hotel rate comparison tool can help you to provide a transparent panel to visitors. 
• You can timely release discounts depending upon your profit margin and the price your competitor has set. Secure competitive advantage & sharp pricing.

Cons – 

• The API doesn’t allow booking facilities through the platform.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

2. OTA Insight

OTA Insight is another hotel price shopping rate shopping and market intelligence tool that provides real-time information on your competitors’ complete pricing strategy.

It features granular insights on competitors’ rates, ranking, reputation, and OTB occupancy, and empowers hotel partners with relevant datasets.

Pros – 

• Gain an edge in the market by accessing and analyzing competitors’ data and understanding their pricing strategy. 
• Also, it helps you to deliver smarter revenue, distribution, and marketing outcomes through its market-leading commercial platform.

Cons – 

• It doesn’t provide real-time reviews and the personal experiences of the customers.

Rating: 8 out of 10

3. Amadeus

Amadeus powers more personalized and authentic travel experiences.

It is designed to enrich every stage of the traveler’s journey and help hospitality providers acquire, service, and retain guests by profitability driving demand and converting them into loyal fans.

Pros – 

• It is a forward-looking hotel business intelligence solution empowering hoteliers to create the most profitable revenue strategies. 
• With access to detailed insight into forward-looking on-the-books data for both your property and your competitive set, you can create unique strategies to outperform your competition and attract the right business mix for your property.

Cons – 

• It doesn’t facilitate a price comparison between different hotels.

Rating: 8 out of 10

4. Rateping Technologies Pvt Ltd

RatePing helps Hotels and Vacation Rentals stay alert and ensures that you make the smartest pricing decisions.

Their Mobile and Web app makes pricing decisions quite simple, and anyone can use them. Rate ping is one of the best rate shopping solutions out there in the market. The technology is simple to use.

Pros – 

• It’s simple and easy to use and provides efficient support from the company. 
• Its intuitive and quick updating helps take faster decisions. Accurate pricing and price parity across channels are the most important things to drive direct bookings and RatePing helps you monitor your competitor’s prices and set pricing effectively.

Cons – 

• It doesn’t provide actual reviews of the customers regarding a particular search.

Rating: 7 out of 10

5. Hotel Runner

HotelRunner, helps hotels and travel agencies to go online from offline while creating innovative sales channels via state-of-the-art technologies and enabling users to achieve higher recognition in international markets, broader customer outreach, and higher profitability. 

Pros – 

• HotelRunner automates inventory distribution, maximizes direct channel revenues, and boosts profit margins.
•  Moreover, it is a marketplace for the tourism industry, bringing together hotels, travel agencies, and service providers on the same platform. 
• Hotels can market their property to various travel agencies, while both improving their online visibilities and buying a variety of goods and services.

Cons – 

• It doesn’t help with making a price comparison over the API.

Rating: 8 out of 10

6. SiteMinder

See detailed insight reports that provide real-time market and performance data to help you make more informed pricing and distribution decisions.

You can see which channels are performing best, and where you should focus your marketing efforts or closely monitor the hotel prices of your competitors. You can check them out here.

Pros  –

• The channel manager integration is very powerful and reliable. 
• Information travels in a very secure mode and there are no gaps in that information.

Cons – 

It doesn’t support customer reviews and feedback.

Rating: 8 out of 10

7. RateGain

RateGain is a leading provider of SaaS products for travel and hospitality companies helping them maximize occupancy rates in hotels every day through its AI-powered solutions.

They provide holistic Rate Intelligence and Competitive Intelligence to our customers so that they always stay ahead of their competition. 

Pros  –

• RateGain is a prominent channel manager connection connected with almost 400 plus OTAs which is very useful. 
• The software is easy to use and consolidates a ton of useful data onto one platform.

Cons – 

• It doesn’t allow you to get bookings from the platform directly.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

8. RateTiger Shopper (By eRevMax)

RateTiger is a rate shopper which is an easy-to-use hotel BI, rate shopping, and price intelligence tool.

Get access to the hotel prices dataset that you can use for – Analyzing rate position and market movement – Shop for multiple nights as well as multiple room types – Monitor competitor’s hotel movement including closed and open dates – Retain rate parity and rate integrity.

Pros – 

• It has deep two-way integration with distribution channel partners including Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, Airbnb, Google, HRS, and Hotelbeds, among various others. 
• It also offers connections to leading PMS, RMS, CRS, Booking Engines, and other hotel technology systems for a seamless online distribution experience.

Cons – 

• It doesn’t offer customer reviews on its API software.

Rating: 8 out of 10

9. Travolutionary (By Gimmonix)

Travolutionary empowers some of the world’s leading travel brands to stay competitive in the cut-throat online consolidation travel space.

It​ not only helps you compete effectively but also manages your pricing efficiently, improves conversions, and maximizes profits. 

Pros – 

• It provides access to all major OTA direct and hotel negotiated rate intelligence as well as over 80 wholesale bed banks, totaling close to 1.4 million unique accommodation options available online for instant reservation. 

Cons – 

• It doesn’t feature real-time feedback and opinions of the customers.

Rating: 7 out of 10

10. Hotel Compete

Hotel Compete is a business intelligence start-up for the Hospitality Industry, specializing in market research.

This product help hoteliers gain a booking eye view to building the maximum revenue for the best rate given their amenities, location, and competitors.

Pros –

•  It provides fair competitive pricing in this competition. Also, it helps you generate more revenue by attracting customers through unexpected deals and offers.

Cons – 

• The API doesn’t provide sentimental opinions and actual feedback from the pre-visited customers.

Rating: 8 out of 10

11. Rate Insights by Trivago

The complete hotel Rate Insights feature on trivago Hotel Manager PRO provides you with everything you need to know on one simple dashboard to set competitive rates.

Such as benchmarking of competitor rates on all OTAs, Overview of room rates over 360 days, notification of rate changes, the impact of local events on rates, and the level of demand for hotels in your area. This is what makes it a perfect tool for optimizing hotel room rates to maximize booking.

Pros – 

• Allows you to instantly catch up on the trending hotel rates and patterns in the industry. Also, using this hotel tool rate site you can quickly attain a competitive advantage by designing a selective price strategy.  

Cons – 

• It doesn’t help in booking the chosen property over its software.

Rating: 8 out of 10

12. Hotel Price Reporter

The Hotel Price Reporter helps leading hotel operators to gather and process vast amounts of pricing and demand data from multiple channels to uncover patterns and make better-informed pricing decisions.  

Pros –

•  Its leading revenue management tool lets you uncover pricing and demand insights, simplify your hotel portfolio’s monitoring, and helps you engage in new ways. 

Cons – 

• The API doesn’t showcase real-time reviews and suggestions about a particular property.

Rating: 8 out of 10

How Can Hotel Rate Shopping Tools Increase Profitability?

Hotel rate shopping software helps businesses to get an understanding of information relevant to the market and use that data to make confident dynamic pricing strategies for your hotel in accordance with real-time market demand & competition.

For hotels, it’s important to understand the competitor’s pricing strategy and demand forecasts in real time to create effective yield management to increase revenue generation.

On-time price deals and exclusive offers will attract customers to the business which can boost profitability.  

Plus, being aware of local events and other seasonal occurrences can impact overall market demand. 

And using the aggregated information to adjust your pricing and revenue management strategy accordingly this software for hotel rate shopping will contribute to the overall growth of the business.

How Can A Hotel Rate Shopper Help You Achieve Your Goals?

For hotel revenue managers hotel rate comparison tool simplifies the business process of refining essential information in a single get result.

What used to take up hours in the manual process now takes minutes.

Plus, It helps you to save up huge costs and time input and utilize it in some other result-oriented business function. Thus, it contributes to helping your business achieve its goals.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Conclusion:

The Hotel Rate Shopping Tools can be integrated with your business process to create a successful revenue management strategy and can take your business to attain great heights.

Why just see the bigger picture when you can attain it through the automation process of this extremely handy and useful software which eases the process to a great extent?

Explore the features of Makcorps hotel API today!! And, make real-time data-driven decisions that bolster profitability and success.