expediaExpedia Axes Its PriceMatching Guarantee in a Sharp Break From the Past
Meanwhile, archrivalBooking still offers a pricematching guaranteeon its hotel listings.Priceline also continued to prominently toutits best rate offer. No doubt the company and its Priceline Group sister brands will be watching Expedias move with interest.
Asked to comment about the move, Expedia Inc. spokeswoman Sarah Gavin told Skift Our marketplace, as well as the broader landscape, has evolved so much that there are so many easier ways to save than there were when this was invented. Our customers now have their hands on the savings steering wheel themselves. They dont need the old booster seat anymore.
Or did the company fear that regulators in other markets, such as Europe, might find the notion of a pricematching guarantee a distortion of market pricing perhaps putting independent hotel owners at a disadvantage because they didnt have a comparable prowess at digital marketing?French watchdogs currently are pursuing Expediaand other companies about their contract terms, though not the pricematching guarantees.
The pricematching trend started with U.S. hotel chains. After the U.S. economy tanked in , hoteliers saw a surge in bookings via newonthescene online travel agencies like Expedia. The sudden uptick in commissions alarmed them. So Starwood debuted bestrate guarantees that promised the cheapest rates for their guest rooms would be on their own branded websites.
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The marketing device was so successful, in ct, that online travel agencies starting with Orbitz soon introduced their own version of it a promise to match rates found elsewhere. In ,Orbitz juiced upthe offer to include a voucher for future hotel bookings, and Travelocity matched it. Each addedsimilar offersfor package vacations. Soon after, Expedia copied the move for all travel products.
Until then in the U.S.,Expedia had offered to match the priceand provide a travel coupon for bookers who found a cheaper flight, vacation package, rental car, cruise, or activity on other publicly available sites within hours of the reservation. Similar offers were made in other countries worldwide.
When it came to hotels, Expedia had one of the most generous pricematching guarantees. It promised to refund the difference and give a consumer a travel coupon for future travel if they found a cheaper rate on their hotel reservation up to two days before their checkin.
In short, consumers often griped that the pricematching offers had too many restrictions andclaims were too frequently rejected, as consumer watchdogChristopher Elliotthasoften reported.
In a separate conversation recently, the company told us it continues withthese loyaltyrate experiments with Red Lion Hotelsbut had no further information to offer. In theory, such programs could create complexity if loyalty members were playing off chains like Red Lion and Expedia.
Expedia Axes Its PriceMatching Guarantee in a Sharp Break From the Past
Atassi did not say that the loyalty program was the reason for the move. She said instead by email, In terms of the thinking behind the decision, we are confident in the strength of our marketplace and the wide array of options we offer travelers from over a million flights, hotels, packages. This allows our travelers to continue to find great deals to help them see the world and get to where they need to be.
Adding a spin to this,since Expedia has experimentedwith offering hotel memberonly rates on m and Hotels. Once Expedia started these rates publicly available on its own website and apps, suddenly the rates that no longer counted as being publicly available for price matching suddenly were publicly available as long as consumers were already hotel program members or Expedia users signed up to become members.
Photo Credit The Corp Amman Jordan hotel is available for booking on Expedias website but forget about any price matching guarantee from Expedia.
Overall, the company did not explain the business rationale behind the decision. Had the guarantee lost effectiveness over time? Were the s of consumers who went to the trouble to submit complaints cheapskates the company no longer wanted to spend money supporting?
Terms varied. But in general, consumers had a limited time, such as hours, to comparison shop. The rate found elsewhere had to be for the identical product both nonsmoking king beds with ocean views for the identical travel dates. The guarantees excluded many things, such as discounts for particular membership clubs like AAA, travel sold via wholesalers and private sale websites, and the like.
Whatever the reason, there are some suggestions the move came suddenly. Expedias Japanese website still hadnt taken down its home promotion logo for the offer, thoughthe that had details on how to claim the guarantee has been taken down. Under that generous version of the offer, consumers who booked onExpedia Japanand found a publicly available lower rate on another Japanbased website within a day of their booking with Expedia could have received a refund of twice the difference, up to , Japanese yen, or about .
The marketing device was successful. By , InterContinental, Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott copied it because the promise instilled confidence in comparisonshopping consumers and only a sliver of them attempted to make claims.
Yet another possible issue Did the price match lose its luster because hotels often reserve lower rates for their loyalty program members? For consumers who are members of hotel programs, it is not often obvious why the low rates they see on a hotel site arent ones that Expedia should match.
As of today, Expedia Inc.ownedTravelocityOrbitz, and Hotels all still had pricematching offers though the offers are not prominent. It took some sleuthing, for instance, to find Hotelss once welladvertisedprice guarantee.
With official brand descriptions like these, its like Radisson was just begging for us to give them the Skift Take
Expedias move seems odd, as hotel chains ramp up their directbooking campaigns that include bestprice guarantees. Our guess is that the company tested and found that most consumers are no longer swayed by pricematching offers. Or perhaps there was pressure from ongoing probes in Europe.
It is unclear whether Expedia sister brands will drop the guarantees, too.
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Orbitz and Travelocity only have two words on their home s mentioning their price guarantees, while Hotels states that we provide incomparable choice with a Price Guarantee but then offers no link to it from its home.
One possible explanation is that Expedia wanted to promote its loyalty program. Anyone who creates an account and signs up to become a free Expedia member can get access to a hotel price guarantee on their first and subsequent bookings, explained Expedia spokesperson Nisreene Atassi. The bestprice guarantee for other travel purchases is no longer active even for them, though.
For , the flagship brand of online booking conglomerate Expedia Inc., joined the industrywide practice of claiming that consumers would always get the best prices for travel on its websites and apps. But on October , Expediabranded websites worldwide dropped that longstanding offer, Skift has learned.