How promotion logic of each OTAs works

"Explore how different OTAs operate with their unique promotion logics. Learn how creating tailored campaigns can maximize your hotel's visibility and revenue."

Nowadays, a significant portion of hotel bookings comes from OTAs (Online Travel Agencies), often accounting for more than half of total bookings. Each hotel may derive varying revenue from each OTA, as different OTAs excel in different markets and customer segments. Typically, hotels work with around 10 OTAs, more or less, to cover their markets and target audiences effectively.

Creating campaigns or promotions on various OTAs is a vital tool to enhance visibility and boost revenue for hotels. A hotel that understands and can strategize promotions and campaigns tailored to each festival season and customer segment can outperform competitors, even during low seasons.

However, a critical detail that many hotels overlook is that the promotion and campaign logic of each OTA is not the same. Without researching this, creating promotions can lead to pricing issues across different OTAs.

So, how do the promotions of each OTA work?

Let's Start with Booking.com

Booking.com divides promotions into five types:

1. Genius program
2. Targeted rates - Mobile Rate and Country Rate 
3. Portfolio deals - Basic Deal, Early Booker Deal, Last Minute Deal, Basic Deal, Secret Deal, Free Nights Deal
4. Campaign - Late Escape Deal, Getaway Deal
5. Deep deals - Limited Time Deal, Black Friday Deal

The principle behind combining promotions on Booking.com involves a step-wise discount approach (instead of simply adding percentages together).

Promotions of different types can be combined according to the table below, but promotions within the same type will not be combined.

Next, Let's Understand Agoda's Promotion Logic

Agoda categorizes discounts into several types:

1. Essential Promotions - Customized Promotion, Early Bird, Last-Min, Long Stay
2. Targeted promotions (Rate Channel) - Includes:
   
   1. Product - Private Sale, Package 
   2. Loyalty - VIP Gold, VIP Silver, VIP Platinum 
   3. Geography - International and Domestic 
   4. Platform - Mobile 
   5. Beds Network 
       
3. Seasonal promotions - เCampaigns created for special festivals. Note: Seasonal Promotions cannot be canceled easily and require Agoda's team to do so.

 

How do Agoda's promotions work together?

Agoda's promotions can be combined, but promotions of the same type will not be combined.
In the case of Targeted Promotions, there are additional conditions. Targeted Promotions are subdivided into five types, and each type can be combined with others, but not within the same subtype. Here are the details:

Seasonal Promotion

This type can be combined with Essential Promotions and Targeted Promotions. If more than one Seasonal Promotion is active, only one will be used per booking.

Essential promotions

This type can be combined with Seasonal Promotions and Targeted Promotions. If more than one Essential Promotion is active, only one will be used per booking.

Targeted Promotion

This type is a bit more special than the first two. It can be combined with Essential Promotions and Seasonal Promotions. It is further divided into five subtypes. If more than one is active, you can choose whether to combine them or not, but they cannot be combined within the same subtype.

For example, if you open Domestic and other promotions under Targeted Promotions as follows:

• Domestic
• Internation 
• Beds Network 
• Mobile 
• Private Sales 
• VIP Silver 

You can set your Domestic promotion to work with other Targeted Promotion types according to the settings shown, but the Domestic Promotion cannot be combined with International as they are in the same subtype.

Agoda combines promotions by adding percentages together, unlike Booking.com, which applies discounts in steps.

 

Stay tuned for our next article where we'll delve into the workings of other OTAs!