Save yourselves & ourselves money, when you book direct!
You’ll hear it often from any Accommodation Provider: “Thank you for staying, please book direct next time”. The reasons why we ask you to do this though is not always explained why. The main reason we ask for you to book direct is, that we can save on paying commissions and you can save because most providers will pass on a fair discount to you as a direct booker if they can avoid paying commission.
Online Travel Agents (OTA’s) like booking.com and Expedia, have become an essential marketing tool for accommodation providers. They give us broad and distant exposure to markets that we’d never otherwise have access to. Another benefit for the partnerships, are that they introduce us to new guests, and then it is in our own interest that we turn repeat guests into our own guests, by getting them to book direct. However, it’s not all sunshine and roses! OTA’s are mostly based offshore, and therefore so are their multibillion dollar incomes. Commissions can range from 12% to 25% (or more). Commissions can be a hard hit for small providers and even large providers whose main source of bookings originate from these partnerships.
Dick Smith brought the issue of booking direct versus booking through an Online Travel Agent (OTA) back in September 2018. If you have the time, view his passionate YouTube video on the subject here. He explains very clearly why booking direct is good for your own Country’s tourism market.
La Vida On Anzac does do an online price beat, we call it our “Friends With Benefits” deal. Other Friends with benefits offers include:
- Priority early check in
- Free Gift on Arrival
- Complimentary Late check out (subject to availability)
- Greater flexibility in date changes
- Priority on room selection
- Complimentary Upgrades where and when available
Unfortunately, OTA’s do not make it easy to book direct once they have hooked you into their booking platform. Their Google rankings are almost always first listed, even if you enter the name of the facility that you want to stay at! To find an Accommodation Providers own website, you have to scroll down past the Google Ads to find the actual website and contact details of the provider you are looking for. You will also not find a phone number or an email address for the facility on any OTA platform. This is because these platforms want you to book with them and stay loyal to their own branding.
Our suggestion to those bookers who are prepared to make a commitment to becoming a direct booker, is not to avoid these OTA and price comparative sites (which are owned by the OTA’s), but use these sites to find your dates, number of persons stay, room type, price and name of accommodation choice. Once decided, simply Google your preferred accommodation venue to find your preferred providers own website and/or phone number. From there, you can check out their own specials, or just ring/email quoted price, dates, and details found on the OTA site – if they are like La Vida On Anzac, they’ll do a better deal for you!
Better for you, better for us! Book direct where and when you can.
