Nor1 says new banner ads help hotels better compete with OTAs

Nor1, a provider of hospitality upgrade, upsell and merchandising technology, says its new inventory-based banner feature is helping hotels make better use of their data to compete more effectively with online travel agencies such as Expedia and Booking.com during the buying process.

Nor1 works with brands such as Hilton, IHG, Radisson Hospitality, AccorHotels and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. CEO Jason Bryant says about 90% of Nor1’s clients are using the new banners and are seeing conversion rates above 25%.

The banners use triggers such as scarcity and popularity of offers, based on data Nor1 pulls in directly from hotel inventory, to spur guests’ buying behavior.

“The hotelier has all these buyer transaction data points - they just haven’t been leveraging it. So we’re helping them leverage all those buying decisions in such a way that the guest will get a richer experience through this direct channel than they would through an OTA,” Bryant says.

“An OTA cannot offer in as sophisticated a fashion or a data-rich presentation that we can give to the guest on behalf of the hotel for upsells, for ancillary offers.”

Bryant says Nor1’s two-way integration with hotels gives it real-time inventory data that OTAs do not have, which limits OTAs' ability to provide accurate offers.

“If they say ‘not many left,’ that’s different than ‘one or two left.’ You have to be careful with that. There has to be a direct, real-time feed into inventory in order to state absolute numbers. Trust is a huge issue."