Today's travellers want immediate and relevant information about their travel options. That's why they rely heavily on meta-search engines and online travel agencies (OTA). As a hotelier, it is imperative to understand the differences between meta-search engines and OTAs.
OTAs VS meta-search engines
They display the current rates of many different hotels in the same destination. They promote hotels in destinations around the world, presenting their rates, descriptions and photos.
You can book directly from an OTA website, whereas you cannot book from a meta-search engine. This is the main difference between the two. However, meta search engines like TripAdvisor and Google have started to display instant booking buttons that allow travellers to book directly from meta search results, giving you more direct booking possibilities. On the other hand, without a distribution partnership with OTAs, you can be sidelined from much of the market.
Whether it is an OTA or a meta-search engine, both convey a pivotal role for hotels in all segments. In this case, a channel manager can help you automate the distribution of your inventory across all channels, while a booking engine can obtain directed bookings from the results of the metasearch engine.