More consumers are looking at travel online, but the challenge is to increase the numbers that actually proceed to book and pay online.
Emergence of META
An area of the online travel sphere that is offering fierce competition to OTAs is the emergence of metasearch sites, which have already had significant success with the region’s consumers. HotelsCombined.com regional manager — MENA Amer Al Halabi noted that metasearch had grown in popularity due to its ability to offer consumers a spectrum of choices on one platform.
“It is the concept that compares and brings everything in front of the users. The users don’t rely on one brand, they go from one site to another. So the metasearch concept is not always the cheapest. We don’t show the cheapest to the highest, we show according to the most booked or more viewed hotels and then it is up to the consumer to decide,” he added.
But Trivago CEO and co-founder Roif Schroemgens was sceptical of the ability of the Middle East in accommodating such sites, saying: “Meta always likes the more dense markets; it is more attractive for consumers when more players are in the market.”
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Schroemgens said that markets such as UK, Germany and the USA were more suited to the online model and it was too early to look at the Middle East.
Wego Middle East & North Africa managing director Mohamad Ibrahim Masri agreed, noting that more players would facilitate the expansion of the metasearch model.
“If we had more local OTAs it would make it more exciting for us to do business, but we see that there is more appetite for local OTAs to move from offline to online,” he added.
Comparing the two business models led to some surprising opinions. While the majority of parties remained on their own side of the fence, there were some metasearch experts who noted that OTAs had the greater appeal for the consumer.
Travelstart CEO and founder Stephan Ekbergh said that investors “love” metasearch platforms and in his opinion in terms of business it was a “superior model”.
However, he added that from a customer point of view OTA provided “somebody that supports the customer through the whole trip”.
MakeMyTrip’s Joshi added that there should be no classification between OTAs and meta, as they were both intermediary services. “It’s who services the customer. Sure technology is progressing and allowing you to do much better things, and different models are diverging,” he added.
A similar approach is often taken by hoteliers, who tend to class OTAs and metasearch providers in the same bracket. Millennium & Copthorne’s Darkazally pondered the validity of comparison sites.
“I know one car company website in the region that gives you the details of a car, and once you click on it, it gives you the rate and all the USPs and says ‘do you want to see a comparison?’ and on the same website it shows you all the competitors — the other brands’ cars — and their prices. Imagine — can you see Sheraton.com putting the price of a Millennium hotel on their website? I don’t think we can comprehend the idea.
“It’s a big cultural shift — I think there was a consortium of a few hotel companies that tried to do this a few years ago through a website called Roomkey — it didn’t see much success.
I think it’s a tradition in hotels where we like the competitiveness of the hotel business but it’s something serious we should all look at. I don’t want my website to produce business for Sheraton — but what if Sheraton’s website is giving me business as well? Maybe it’s a good idea ... then it would save all these commissions,” observed Darkazally, although he added that this was unlikely to be a project for any hotel in the next two to three years.
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