VIDEO: The push for direct - will hotels take a stand or accept a hand?

Is now the best time for hotels to push their direct booking strategies and loyalty programs with customers?

Or will they need intermediaries more than ever as they reboot?

This is not a new discussion, by any means, with hotels desperate for years, even decades now, to claw back some control over their distribution of bookings.

The combined marketing muscle of the mega online travel agencies came in pre-pandemic at around $12 billion in 2019.

The ecosystem then was one whereby hotels used OTAs to help fill their rooms but clearly wanted more guests to come their way via their own websites and marketing tactics.

There has been a shift toward direct bookings as market have reopened to travelers once more in late 2020 and the first six months of this year.

But the OTA giants will no doubt be gearing up to reignite their finely tuned digital marketing efforts later this year and into 2022. 

So, hotels - independents and chains - are on standby to discover if their recovery marketing campaigns have some form of longevity or, disappintingly for them, the 2019 eocsystem returns. 

There are always lots of nuances to the issue and no playbook strategy to work from. But hotels have a tailwind of pent-up demand and lower levels of spend by OTAs to take advantage of for the time being.

Maud Bailly, CEO for Southern Europe at Accor, and Tim Davis, founder and managing director at PACE Dimensions, join Phocuswright analyst Lorraine Sileo to discuss the issues in play for the resst of 2021 and beyond.