5 Resasons to Include Metasearch in Your Distribution

Hotel distribution is best understood as the way of capturing traffic and travelers. Metasearch, therefore, becomes a key tool for distributing.

According to a study carried out by L2, a digital innovation company, travelers have easily adopted metasearch into their search processes for markets. China uses the most with more than half (54%), Germany comes in second place with 42%, closely followed by France (38%), the United States (36%) and then the United Kingdom (35%). PhocusWright datarevealed that 6% of the total traffic of North America comes from the different metasearch engines: TripAdvisor, Google Finder, Trivago or Kayak, among others.

In this continuous struggle for margins, commissions and market shares, metasearch now plays a major role in the distribution world. To improve your hotel’s distribution, it’s first necessary to analyze this technology and find out to what extent it’s beneficial to open new channels and facilitate new markets to improve your product’s visibility.

Here are 5 reasons why metasearch is key to your hotel’s distribution strategy:

1. Non-branded Traffic. More than half of the traffic that feeds into metasearch is non brand. That is, the traveler searches for terms like ‘Madrid luxury hotels’ or ‘5-star London hotel.’ In this way, the investment associated with the brand loses value and the user identifies hotels more sensitive to factors such as price or online reputation.

2. Return on Investment (ROI). According to a study done by 80 Days, the average ROI associated with data is 9:1; for every € spent on metasearch you recover 9. The conversion rate of different metasearch channels varies significantly. Hence, why it’s important to take extra care when choosing the most appropriate channel when distributing a product. You must assess the types of customers each channel brings you, channel costs, customer acquisition costs, and so forth. By doing this, you identify a number of factors that will help you determine which channels are most profitable.

3. Assisted conversions. Of all the traffic that comes from metasearch, 46% of the time it’s not be the last channel used right before booking. What does this mean exactly? The answer is quite simple. Metasearch may not always be attributed with the last stop before a booking takes place, but it is definitely playing a vital role in influencing a traveler’s decision-making process. This is seen in a high percentage of potential bookings.

4. Source of market knowledge to improve your hotel’s distribution strategy. Make the most of the user experience and the know-how of metasearch. Hotels should capitalize on large investments in usability or in optimizing the purchasing process regarding user behavior analysis to optimize their technology.

5. Product distribution in new markets. Metasearch allows you to distribute in markets that are otherwise difficult to reach and economically unviable. These types of platforms standardize processes and offer visibility in inaccessible markets in distribution through other means. This is especially of greatest interest for independent hotels or other organizations without a huge sales force.