PARITY CLAUSES AND THE EUROPEAN COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM 517 How have hoteliers adapted to rate parity6? While rate parity clauses generally restrict the hotel’s ability to offer and promote lower rates online, hoteliers have used alternative methods to encourage direct bookings. These methods, which vary depending on the specificities of the hotel’s agreements made with OTA partners, may include the following7: a) Monitoring the rates published for the property across all online distribution channels with a rate shopper, such as the “Rate Insights” tool in Trivago Hotel Manager PRO; b) Publishing direct website rates alongside the OTA rates on metasearch sites. While the hotel’s official website rates and the rates advertised by OTAs remain in parity, travellers can choose to complete their booking on the hotel’s website. On Trivago, for example, the expert feature “Rate Connect” places a hotel’s official website rates in a blue box at the top of the list of deals on their hotel profile, where it will have greater visibility and resonate with the travellers who prefer to book directly; c) Packaging additional amenities such as free Wi-Fi or a complimentary breakfast to increase the value for the traveller who books directly, and advertising these deals on their hotel profiles In such cases the hotel’s rates are not lower than the OTAs’, but the perceived value of the guest experience they are able to offer at the hotel is visibly higher; d) Promoting private rates through customer loyalty programs, direct marketing email campaigns or register-only travel providers. With this approach, hotels encourage both direct bookings and brand loyalty; and e) Listing certain room types exclusively on the hotel website so that those room rates are not subject to rate parity agreements with OTAs. It is the hotels with optimised, integrated booking engines that are in the best position to employ this method. 2. PARITY CLAUSES AND COMPETITION Parity clauses provide us with an illustration of the complex balancing exercises in which competition enforcers engage. In a vertical relationship, parity clauses 6 Source: https://businessblog.trivago.com/rate-parity-hotel-industry-status/. 7 Scott, I. (2015, August). Hotel News Now. Retrieved from Rate parity’s legal landscape: www.hotelnewsnow. com/Articles/27374/Rate-paritys-legal-landscape.
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