Is Rate Parity Good Or Bad For Hotels?
Every hotel business owner wants to boost bookings and overcome the challenge of rate disparity which affects the perception of their hotel brand value among their customers.
This is the reason why a majority of hotels hop on the trend of maintaining rate parity to communicate and establish a uniform pricing structure across different channels.
But when it comes to the real application of rate parity, there are a variety of perspectives that define whether it is an effective approach for hoteliers or not.
To understand more about what hotel parity is and how to monitor it, head over to the link.
In this article, we will focus on the question – Is Rate Parity Good or Bad?
Is Rate Parity a Good Or Bad Thing For Hotels?
The answer to whether rate parity is a good or bad thing for hotels can be viewed from different perspectives.
Perspective No. One
Why Hotels Focus On Maintaining Rate Parity?
Rate Parity provides hotel business owners with the advantage to maintain a transparent and fair pricing structure across different distribution channels. It prevents other OTA platforms from communicating different pricing to increase their benefits and provides leverage to the hotels to boost their occupancy rate, profitability, and revenue generation.
Rate parity is a pricing agreement between hotels and online travel agencies (OTAs) that requires the hotel to offer the same room rates on all channels, including the hotel’s own website and third-party sites like Booking.com, Expedia, and More.
Perspective No. Second
Why Are Some Hotels Against Rate Parity?
Some hotels are against rate parity because it can limit their ability to offer lower rates on their own website in order to drive direct bookings.
How Does It Affect Customer Experience?
This can also have a negative impact on customer experience as it can limit the customer’s ability to find the best rate for a hotel room. Additionally, hotels may lose the ability to offer customer incentives, such as loyalty program rewards, when rates are locked in by rate parity agreements.
Final Words:
Different hoteliers have different perceptions of rate parity. In this blog, we have made you aquiented with both perceptions. Now, it’s your call to decide, Is Rate Parity Good Or Bad for your hotel?
However, rate parity is something that hoteliers shouldn’t give up to increase their profits and drive more direct sales. It creates a sense of trust and reliability among customers for a particular hotel brand that helps in increasing the number of bookings.
But at the same time, it is important for hotel industry leaders to understand that maintaining a uniform rate parity requires high dedication, teamwork, and vigilant hotel pricing monitoring in real-time.
Read: How To Track Hotel Prices From Expedia & Booking.com For Maintaining Rate Parity?
Although they can utilize smart hotel rate shopping tools such as Makcorps Hotel Search API to get access to real-time pricing trends, it needs consistency to make it work.
