Booking.com has emerged overwhelmingly as the dominant distribution channel for European hotels according to a survey of more than 200 properties.
While hotels use an average of 3.5 online travel agencies for distribution, on average 50% of online reservations, are coming from Priceline-owned booking.com.
A further 30% of reservations are from a combination of other OTAs, with Expedia and its sister brands featuring quite strongly, while the remaining 20% come from the hotels' own websites.
Three-quarters of respondents say they plan to drive more business via booking.com in the future recognising the strength of the brand and the volume of transactions it drives for them.
The 'Directly from the Trenches' survey, conducted by Susquehanna Financial Group, also demonstrates optimism from the sector with 93% of respondents saying transactions are the same or better compared with Q3 last year.
In addition, 89% anticipate the coming three to six months to be the same or better than expected compared with year-on-year figures.
The research was carried out over three weeks in September and October, on more than 200 hotels with 100 respondents, to gauge the health of travel bookings in the third quarter of the year.