If Google gives a better experience for travelers, then it could be a good opportunity for hotels to fight back from OTA dependency.
Quote from Gino Engels, co-founder and chief commercial officer of OTA Insight, in an article on PhocusWire this week.
Google, Airbnb and the evolving distribution landscape
There was a time, around 11 years ago, when the word "Troogle" was floated around in the industry and the business media.
It was never a serious brand name for Google efforts in the travel sector, but it was a useful catch-all for those who were beginning to see and suspect what the company was doing.
Back then, Google was indeed just a "search giant" - pre-YouTube and DoubleClick acquisitions, and a long time before the company's official first foray into the travel sector.
It didn't take a genius or amateur conspiracy theorist very long to figure out that the "ten blue links" could soon make way for additional services and tools that targeted travelers directly, using either internal products that it might develop or those from partners.
The acquisition of flight shopping tech provider ITA Software for $700 million in 2010 triggered various reactions in the industry, ranging from fits of anger (many will remember FairSearch, the lobbying group set up by Microsoft and featuring Expedia, TripAdvisor and Kayak) to "let's wait and see, it could be nothing".
The launch of Flight Search and Hotel Finder in the following years illustrated that Google wanted to spread its influence on travel buying decisions into different parts of the funnel.
The introduction of Google Trips - the mobile app that aggregates content about a destination alongside a traveler's details for a hotel or flight - is its most significant move in years, and puts Google's services and partner information/products in the hands of users throughout a journey.
What is interesting to note is how long this jigsaw, as many of us used to call it, has taken to come together. Rather than a poor, Wave-like launch of a big "Google Travel" product, most of the elements have been introduced with fairly limited or simple functionality and then grown over time.
Engels is right when he notes how improvements by Google could challenge the status quo.
Hotels want to broaden their distribution channels, for sure, but there is more to consider than just having Google give chains and independent properties the opportunity to shift their spend away from online travel agencies.
What such a shift might do (and what hotels are undoubtedly hoping for) is that a broadening of the channels will help keep commission levels competitive at the OTA end of things, and drive a few more direct bookings via Google.
It could, alternatively, be a case - a few years down the line - of hotels realising that there's a new gatekeeper to their customer acquisition strategy... one in the shape of Google (especially if facilitated bookings arrive at scale as part of a hotel's participation).
The bigger picture here is that Google's jigsaw is not complete - there are many pieces (and acquisitions, potentially) still on the table.
To think that the "don't be evil" search giant could be a panacea for one element of the industry ignores the long-term approach that is has taken to gain more influence over both travelers and the products they search and book.