WIRED: Pleased to Meet Your Re“app”quaintance
Forget online booking sites, hotel brands are imploring travellers to book direct again.
By Kate Baggott
What’s the easiest way to get the worst hotel room? Book through Expedia, Hotwire, Hotels.com or any of the other travel service re-sellers.
Ah, how we once loved our digital travel agents, who built brands based on speed of access and one-screen comparison shopping while hotels and airlines, like other traditional businesses, lost time waiting for the Internet fad to fade away like a neglected Tamagotchi.
The evolution from desktop to booking via mobile apps was an easy transition for these digital travel brands and their customers. Unfortunately, the days of bragging about how little your last city break cost are over and a new era of consumer concern about appropriate service and comfort is rising. It has left consumers walking a fine line between high-tech research tools and the personal telephone call.
Airline counter agents, hotel receptionists and managers know how we book our travel and their more reserved welcome is certainly adding extra chill to the winter air. I mean that literally. The air conditioner in the last hotel room I booked, a tiny cell right next to the elevator, was still running on New Year’s Eve during the coldest weather event in two decades.
I booked through Expedia by force of habit. I should have known better. The writing on the wall – the social media wall – has been getting bolder with complaints about poor quality rooms, flight rescheduling nightmares and customer service that’s both unfriendly and inept when bookings go bad. Just because your flight is with a specific airline or your room in a well-known hotel chain, doesn’t mean they’ll be the ones to step in to fix any problems. Rather, it’s up to the service you booked with to smooth over any difficulties you face.
This new emphasis is eating into the convenience that was always the main deliverable of booking services. Travel service providers were once willing to stand behind their brand and provide help, but now they’re making sure you know the booking service is responsible for your comfort. As a result, more and more customers are being redirected to long holds with call centres based in Cairo that can only implement management decisions made in Las Vegas.
The hotel industry in particular has thrown down the gauntlet in a direct challenge to travellers. The technological catch-up game is over and they want us to break the room reseller habit and declare our loyalties by dealing directly with them, just as we did in the old days. They’re determined to make our re-acquaintance one app at a time.
Mobile booking and customer contact apps now cover every sector of the hotel industry, from the high-end Hilton Group’s HHonors app, to the mid-range IHG Rewards Club app, to the budget side of the business with a Motel 6 app. All of them push special offers through update feeds while residing on smart phones and tablets. The ease-of-use and even more superior immediacy are especially important when you have to end a road trip due to a snowstorm or cancelled flight.
Usually tied to loyalty programs, rewards points can be tracked and exchanged for upgrades immediately. More importantly, a customer profile built by the app ensures that hotel guests who have a relationship with the company (or show signs of building a relationship) are given due respect and consideration.
While none of us are going to see this kind of phenomenon accounted for in hotel reviews on booking service sites, customers have certainly been getting the message about dealing directly with the hotel. This message is being delivered largely by the growing influence of independent travel blogging and what people are learning is that interactive tools are still essential to research but talking to real people gets the deal.
“I read a couple of exposés about how horribly they treat their small hotel vendors,” says Tiina Veer, a Toronto-based RMT and yoga instructor about online booking services. “Also I read on someone’s travel blog that many hotels are happy to cut you a break if you call them directly and say, ‘I was quoted X dollars for a room at your hotel online, are you willing to match it if I book directly with you?’ They apparently are happy to do it or at least offer you a better rate because they’d still have to pay their cut to the service on their reduced rate.”
It’s a strategy that works, says Tanya Fusco, an IT training professional, “I always book directly, and often call to match rates or book through a loyalty offer.”
Even if you do use a booking service, making direct contact with the hotel is always a good idea, says Scott Scarrow, a promotions and incentives package manager. “Call the hotel directly after you make your reservation and get your room request on file. When you show up the room request will be there and most often, regardless of the booking method, they should or will honour this.”
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