Exely’s Rate Match: Ensuring price consistency for more direct hotel bookings
At ITB Berlin this year, Exely is presenting the outstanding results of Rate Match, a recently released feature that keeps hotel website rates aligned with OTA offers. Currently, Rate Match generates 48% of the website revenue for its users.
Hotels sometimes miss out on direct bookings because OTA rates are lower than those on their websites. Rate Match solves this problem by allowing hotels to compete directly and ensure guests choose their website to book their rooms. In this way, hotels keep more of the booking revenue and decrease commission fees.
By checking price differences between a hotel’s website and online channels every day, Rate Match automatically matches and updates website prices in its Booking Engine and Google Free Booking Links if they are higher than the discounted OTA offer.
Six months after its launch, Rate Match has already proven its effectiveness. The feature is used by more than 500 hotels and in an Exely analysis of Rate Match users, on average, their share of disparity bookings decreased to just 10%. Moreover, Rate Match reduced price disparity by 45% month over month. By effectively matching rates, hotels not only attract price-sensitive customers but also boost their share of direct bookings.
Rate Match is integrated into Exely Suite to make guests’ digital journey seamless. Starting from the online hotel search stage, potential guests are guided to prefer the website over OTAs due to Rate Match’s synchronisation with Google Free Booking Links. The next step is to convert a website visitor into a booking. Here Exely Booking Engine offers a range of pre-set discounts and motivators, which help potential guests make their bookings more quickly. There is also a built-in Loyalty Program in Exely Booking Engine to retain guests. Hotels that use the Rate Match feature with the Loyalty Program tend to achieve up to 40% more room nights from direct bookings.
Visitors to ITB Berlin can learn more about Rate Match and the Exely Suite on the company’s stand.
