A guest shows you a cheaper price on her phone
At check-in, a guest mentions she nearly booked through a site you have never heard of because it was cheaper than your own website. She booked direct because she wanted the breakfast deal. You thank her and go and look. The site is selling your standard double below your own best flexible rate, with breakfast included. You did not load that rate there.
It turns out to be a wholesale rate you gave a tour operator for packaged holidays, which has been resold on its own. On another day the gap is your own mistake: a non-refundable rate plan mapped to the wrong room type in the channel manager, showing as cheaper on one OTA.
You only find these by chance, or when a guest points them out.
Why parity problems keep appearing
Rates for an independent hotel go out through several routes: the channel manager to the OTAs, the booking engine to your website, rate agreements to wholesalers and tour operators, and sometimes a GDS for corporate bookings. Each route can change what the guest sees.
- Rate plans and room types are mapped separately for each channel, and one wrong mapping shows a different price.
- OTA promotions, mobile rates and member discounts can be switched on in the extranet and forgotten.
- Wholesale and package rates sometimes leak onto public sites.
- Currency conversion and taxes make like-for-like comparison fiddly.
- Checking by hand across dates, room types and sites takes more time than anyone has.
What an undercut rate costs you
Every guest who books a cheaper price elsewhere is a guest who might have booked direct, where you pay no commission and own the relationship. Guests who notice the gap trust your website less. If an OTA sees a lower price for your hotel elsewhere, it may also affect how your property is displayed on that OTA, depending on its own rules.
Then there is the time. Someone checking parity properly by hand, across a spread of dates and room types, would spend a large part of a day on it every week. So it does not get done properly.
How we build a rate parity check
- We agree the channels to watch: your website booking engine, the OTAs you use, and the metasearch and discount sites where your hotel appears.
- A set of check dates and room types is chosen: a spread of weekdays and weekends, near and far dates, and your main room types.
- Prices are collected on a schedule, either from a rate shopping data provider or by collecting publicly displayed prices where the site's terms allow.
- Each price is normalised: same room type, same occupancy, same meal plan, same cancellation terms, and taxes treated the same way.
- Gaps over a threshold you set are listed with the channel, date, room, both prices and the likely cause, such as a mapping, a promotion, or an unknown seller.
- A weekly summary goes to whoever manages revenue, and serious gaps raise an alert the same day.
| Gap found | Likely cause | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| One OTA cheaper on one room type only | Rate plan mapping | Channel manager mapping |
| OTA cheaper on mobile only | Mobile or member discount | OTA extranet promotions |
| Unknown site cheaper with breakfast | Wholesale rate resold | Your wholesale agreements |
| Your website dearer on all channels | Booking engine rate not updated | Booking engine settings |
The check does not change any rates. It tells a person where the gap is and what probably caused it. Think of it as hotel rate parity testing on a schedule: the same dates and rooms checked the same way each time, so this week's gaps can be compared with last week's.
Monday morning, once the check runs
Instead of searching your own hotel on five sites, the revenue manager opens a list of this week's gaps. Two are OTA promotions that she decides to keep. One is a mapping error, which she fixes in the channel manager in a few minutes. One is a wholesale leak, which she takes up with the tour operator, with dated evidence.
Over time you see which channels drift most often and where your own processes let gaps in. The guest at check-in stops being your main source of parity information.
Signs your rates are out of parity
- Guests mention finding your hotel cheaper somewhere else.
- Parity checks are done by hand, occasionally.
- You give wholesale or package rates to tour operators.
- Your channel manager has many rate plans mapped across several OTAs.
- You are not sure which OTA promotions are currently switched on.