While Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) have been around for years, more and more travelers are using them to plan and book their trips each year. In fact, the market size of the global online travel agent sector is expected to exceed $820 billion by 2023.
Recent research from Expedia Group also reveals that travelers are 57 percent more likely to book through an OTA than before the pandemic. If your hotel isn’t using OTA marketing, now is the time.
Since Expedia Group (Expedia, hotels.com, Travelocity, Orbitz) and Booking Holdings (booking.com, Priceline, Agoda) are the major OTA players, it makes sense to start with them.
Following are some tips on how you can use OTA marketing to increase brand awareness and drive bookings to your hotel, hotel group or resort.
To stay competitive, hotels of all sizes must use metasearch sites. These sites (e.g. Google, TripAdvisor, Trivago, etc.) aggregate and list hotel room rates from various online travel agencies (OTAs) and other booking sites all in one place. From there, guests compare prices and availability before booking.
Travelers can enter search terms (e.g. travel dates, location), then the metasearch sites present hotels that meet the criteria. The listings show a hotel’s rate (plus guest reviews, amenities, photos and policies) on several different booking sites, like Booking.com. If the traveler clicks the link to one of the channels, they can complete their booking there.
Here are ways hotels can effectively use metasearch websites to increase bookings and gain brand awareness.
If you made it to the end of the game, you got to see Michael B. Jordan as the embodiment of the Alexa device. I appreciated that it was entertaining–you couldn’t wait to see what the woman was going to do next with Jordan–and it showcased all the things that an Alexa device can do (e.g. control the lights). Meanwhile, I thought Paramount+ made a mistake by not explaining that the streaming service is actually going to be the new name of CBS All Access (I had to look it up). At first, I thought CBS was going to lose all of its content, but now I realize it’s just a rebrand.
TAYLOR:
Keep in mind that a 30-second ad cost $5.5 million. Oatly’s commercial featured its CEO singing in a field by himself (a nod to 2020/pandemic) about oat-milk. To me, it was a bit strange and didn’t convince me to go buy oat-milk. If anything, it forced me to drink more regular milk. However, since the ad was shown, Oatly created a limited-edition T-shirt that reads, “I totally hated that Oatly commercial,” under a graphic of the CEO. The company even made an Instagram post saying, “We can’t give you back those 30 seconds, but we can give you this free T-shirt that will let the world know where you stand on our attempt to promote Toni’s singing skills to a wider audience.” Now that’s clever.
JAIMIE:
As anticipated, the majority of this year’s Super Bowl commercials paid homage to 2020 in some way or another. While some brands opted for humor, like Bud Light did with its Lemonade Seltzer ad, others went with a more heartfelt approach. For me, the Anheuser-Busch “Let’s Grab a Beer” commercial struck a nice balance–it was timely and relatable without jumping off the emotional deep end. The ad even had me reminiscing about my days in the service industry. It’s funny to remember how a beer or two with co-workers could help ease the stress from a hectic shift, or in some cases, act as an ice-breaker to what became long-standing friendships. As Anheuser-Busch so eloquently put it, “it’s never just about the beer.”
CARA:
On par with this weekend’s SNL skit, there was a plethora of commercials trying to not-so-subtly address a challenging year of political tensions, racial divide and economic hardships wrapped in a pandemic. While most commercials did little to be clever with their material, I was impressed by Bud Light’s Lemonade Seltzer commercial. The spot included a group of friends reflecting on the “lemon” of a year that 2020 was, but the catch was that in every scene, lemons were literally falling from the sky. It was lighthearted and comical, and it still connected to what they were selling. Cadillac, on the other hand, didn’t do as good of a job connecting its product to its witty ad. I enjoyed the “Edgar Scissorhands” idea for showing off the brand’s hands-free driving feature, but it remains to be seen if people will actually remember what the commercial was selling aside from its nostalgic movie reference.
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