We have to seriously tackle this issue with Hotel General Managers and all distribution players about brand protection online. We know for the last 8-10 years, that Online Travel Agencies (O.T.A) are purchasing keywords using a variety of hotel brand keywords.
That large investment in search engine resulted in traffic being diverted to competitive hotel properties costing billions of lost revenues and million of commission payment.
I seriously think it's time the hotel industry, at least the Middle East markets wakes up and enter into a friendly dispute against these pirates who use unfair practices, to gain more traffic. One website is going ahead and setting up a totally illegal process, that is roomswhiz.com.
In the sample below, you will see how they mis-use a very popular corporate 4-star hotel brand in Dubai Deira.
Here are 3 rules I would recommend for hotels to work on asap:
Rule 1: Collect your OTA agreement and add a clause where they would not bid on your hotel brand name. Needs to be applied to all your OTA agreement without exception. If they don't agree, don't work with them. iN booking.com, the option in their contract is available to thick a check box to stop them marketing on your official brand name.
Rule 2: Communicate to your customers about your Official Brand Website on your Social Media sites, corporate sales call and any type of internal marketing collaterals.
Rule 3: Make a test booking on http://www.roomswhiz.com, and see which rate plan there are using, and contact the leisure travel agents company behind.
For more information, contact us at info@rsvp-hospitality.com
+971505893011
@ Romain Saada
