Skip to main content

What Are Online Travel Agents (OTAs) | Guide

 What is an OTA | What Are Online Travel Agents 

What is an OTA ?

OTAs are Online Travel Agents. As the name suggests, online travels agents are the Companies which provide travel services / solutions to customers as well as providing business to Hotels, Airlines, Trains or Buses.

But usually when someone talks about OTAs there are very high chances that he is referring to Online Travel Agents which deal with Hotel Rooms Booking.


Why OTAs are so popular ?

With internet penetration increasing day by day, lots of services have becoming available online and so is hotel booking too ! Today one can Book any hotel Available on an OTA platform from any part of the world online.


What are some popular OTAs ?

There are lots of OTAs in the market. In fact every country has their own set of popular OTAs now a days.

Some worldwide popular OTAs are Booking.com and Expedia.com. You can find lots of hotels listed on these two OTAs across the globe.

Some popular OTAs in India are MakeMyTrip.com, GoIbibo.com and Yatra.com etc.

There are a few more new entrants in the market namely HappyEasyGo and EaseMyTrip !


What is the use of OTAs in Travel Industry ?

As mentioned above, OTAs are acting as a bridge between the consumers and the service providers i.e., the customers and the hotel business owners.


In old days if a traveller needed to stay somewhere he used to be forced to book a hotel after reaching the destination. Also he used to be forced to move from one hotel to another in order to find a proper stay at an affordable price. This process used to be too hectic and many times travellers were compelled to pay too much for a room with basic amenities.

But now a days, we need not worry so much. We can choose a hotel in advance and even book it before even starting our travel. We can even compare prices of hotels with the services that they offer. This way OTAs are proving to be so so much use for travellers.

Similarly, the hotel owner's uses to be too much dependent on walk-in customers in old days. But now a days they are getting their rooms booked online which is an ad on and thus their business has increased too !


You must have understood how OTAs are helping travellers as well as hotel owners in today's times.



Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Post Your Query Here....

Popular posts from this blog

Generating Revenue | How to Improve a Hotel OTA Listing

How to Improve a Hotel OTA Listing Listing a hotel on OTAs is not that difficult but to generate business out of that listing is a skill. Virat some very smart improvements that need to be done in hotel OTA Listing in order to generate revenue. Content score Or Property Page Score  The contents for the property page score basically indicates how well the setup of the property listing on the OTA has been done. Ideally the contents score should be 100 percent. Image score Image quality score indicates the quality of photos that have been uploaded on the OTA listing. Quality score Some notice require the hotel owner to maintain a 70 Plus quality score. In hotels like MakeMyTrip and Goibibo if if a hotel has quality score more than 70% it means the hotel owner has good engagement with the extranet i.e., the hotel owner uses the expanded very frequently. Amenities and facilities Hotel owner should ensure that all the amenities and facilities that the hotel offers are updated properly. T...
Post a Comment
Read more

Payment Methods in OTAs | Prepay and Pay At Hotel Options

 OTAs which allow Pay At Hotel payment mode to the Hotel Owners There are lots of hotels in the market and some of them provide Pay at hotel options to custimers for booking a hotel room, some provide only Prepaid options and some Provide Pay at hotel as well as Prepaid options both as per the hotel owner's descretion. Lets learn about some such OTAs. OTAs which offer Pay At Hotel option to guests 1. Booking.com 2. Expedia 3. Agoda OTAs which strictly offer Prepaid option to guests 1. MakeMyTrip.com 2. GoIbibo.com 3. AirBnb OTAs which offer Prepaid as well as Pay At Hotel option to guests 1. MakeMyTrip.com - Hotel owner acn offer Prepaid as well as Pay at Hotel option, both to the customers. 2. GoIbibo.com - Hotel owner acn offer Prepaid as well as Pay at Hotel option, both to the customers.
Post a Comment
Read more

Getting Your Hotel Listed on OTAs Part 1 - Booking.com | Guide

 How to List a Hotel on Booking.com Booking.com is a world-wide popular OTA. There thousands of hotels listed on Booking.com and a huge number of Customers use it to book their hotel stays on a daily basis. A hotel owner can list their hotel on Booking.com using the following steps. 1. Make an account / register on admin.booking.com. 2. Select the type of property you want to list. You need to choose it from various options available on Booking.com i.e., Hotel, Resort, Homestay, House Boat etc. 3. Fill in all the details of the hotel like how many rooms does it have, how many categories does it have. 4. Add apealing photos of your property, room level photos as well as property level photos. 5. Add all the amenities that the hotel offers to the customers very carefully. 6. Submit the listing once you had filled all the details. 7. Booking.com will review your request and all the details filled by you. 8. Once Booking.com approves your listing, your hotel will go live on their websi...
Post a Comment
Read more