New Metasearch undercut data: How does your hotel benchmark?

The past year in the hotel industry has seen some big ‘revenge travel’ booking peaks. Metasearch - a channel rich in high intent customers looking to book specific dates - has seen huge growth and continues to be a golden opportunity for hotels.

And don’t OTAs know it.

It’s no secret that the volume of OTAs participating in the auction has also skyrocketed, making impression share more and more difficult to obtain - not to mention the fact that increased competition will further drive up the cost-per-click too.

So while the opportunity is huge for hotels on metasearch, the challenges they face are significant too. The best way to ensure your hotel maximises the opportunity available is to build a strategy based on data. And the best place to start your data analysis is with your undercut rate.

Undercutting - the troublesome topic that’s never too far from a hoteliers mind - is not just stressful in terms of financial impact on your business. It can also leave hoteliers overwhelmed due to the sheer amount of data available, and unsure of where to begin their analysis.

It remains crucial for hotels to determine:

1. Which data is most useful to attain actionable, insights such as ‘I know I am being undercut from OTA X and by Y% - I will change my price to x’
2. What questions to ask of their data to expose undercutting issues and trends quickly so they can be resolved.

So, using the undercutting data from the Triptease Data Marketing Platform, let’s begin by asking a series of questions.

Who are you being undercut by?

Below we are counting how many times each OTA had the best price in meta and as seen above, we know that undercuts by major OTAs have a higher impact than undercuts from smaller random.coms.

The next question in the series is…

… How often you are being undercut?

We segmented the data by region and found a similar story being told across Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, North-America and Latin-America.

Across all regions we can see that when a hotel’s price appears in a Metasearch advert, the direct rate is being undercut over 50% of the time…

… whilst being in parity about a quarter of the time…

… and being cheaper direct, only 15-25% of the time.

That means hoteliers miss out on over 50% of high intent traffic and high converting guests. The result? Margins continue to get smaller and smaller for hotels.

Triptease data analysis shows that OTA undercutting remains a widespread and ongoing challenge for hotels. Focussing on the underlying data trends is hugely important in terms of identifying where your issues are coming from and working with OTA partners to prevent this from happening in future.

But all of this work is stuff that you would typically do after you have been undercut. If a customer has seen your price undercut in metasearch already the chances are you’ve already lost that booking. So, what can a hotelier do to take proactive action in the face of undercutting on metasearch?

What can Hoteliers do?

Firstly, use the insights on the frequency of undercutting to fine-tune your strategy:

1. Use parity data to optimize your pricing strategy The data can be utilised to easily identify who is undercutting you and by how much, giving you the opportunity to show your most favourable room rate that allows for both competitiveness and profitability.
2. Enhance your market position By adjusting your hotel price you are putting yourself in a stronger position when entering the metasearch auction and the market taking traffic that ultimately belongs to you.
3. Increase direct bookings By pricing their rooms in a manner that is competitive, hoteliers can incentivise guests to book directly with the hotel, thereby resulting in greater profits and strengthened guest relationships.

What you may have noticed, is that these strategies all require proactive measures that hoteliers can undertake to stay ahead of OTAs in terms of pricing and rates. But we mentioned above, if a customer has already seen a better rate somewhere else, you’re not going to win the booking. So what can you do in this instance?

Adjust your Metasearch prices automatically with Price Match on Meta

Introducing Triptease Price Match on Meta, a game-changing solution which detects when an OTA is undercutting a hotel in the meta auction and dynamically adjusts the direct price by just enough to capture the booking directly.

Through price matching, hoteliers can guarantee that they have the most competitive pricing during high-impact moments when the guest is choosing whether or not to click through, thereby significantly boosting their metasearch conversions.

The discount range is pre-configured by the hotelier and only applied for their selected OTAs, allowing for complete control over metasearch pricing while ensuring maximum competitiveness during this crucial point in the booking funnel.

Triptease Price Match on Metasearch offers a unique opportunity to regain traffic and direct bookings. Key advantages include:

1. Immediate and substantial revenue growth
2. Dynamic pricing adjustments that can be tailored to meet specific needs
3. Ability to instantly match undercut prices in the auction and booking engine.

For more information on how your hotel can drive direct bookings through Triptease Price Match on Metasearch, please don't hesitate to contact us.