3 Reasons Why OTAs Need Up-to-date Hotel Content on Their Platform

Struggling to keep your online travel business relevant in the dynamic travel industry? The ever-evolving travel industry changing consumer demands has made online travel agencies stay on top of their game. According to a research by The Business Research Company, the online travel agent market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.9% from 2025 and reach $1,259.1 billion in 2030. 

The boom of the OTA market proliferated with multiple players has made it competitive for every OTA to provide the right, relevant and updated hotel content to their consumers. Hotels are constantly changing their content, and this means that if OTAs don’t keep their content updated, they can get beaten by their competition.  

Let’s look at three reasons why up-to-date content is essential to OTAs and then look at how they can use hotel mapping software to keep their content updated. 

Who are Online Travel Agencies? 

OTA or Online Travel Agency plays a vital role in the hotel distribution landscape. They have a maximum presence online, selling travel-related services such as hotels, flights, car rentals, cruises, tours, and much more. These third-party sellers resell services that help consumers to research, plan and book their next trip. OTAs provide numerous choices, benefits, and offers, making them the most-preferred channel for consumers.  

Since 90% of consumers prefer OTAs, most hotels and accommodation providers distribute their properties on OTAs to reach a wider audience. Some of the popular OTAs are Booking.com, Expedia, Cleartrip, Skyscanner, TripAdvisor, etc. 

Recommended: How Travel Agencies Can Meet Customer Expectations In New Normal 

How Do Suppliers Work with OTAs? 

OTAs connect with multiple inventory sources known as suppliers. Hotel suppliers or consolidators are companies who provide an extensive database of hotel content, including hotel rates, room availability, room images, facilities, location, geocodes, etc., to various travel agents. OTAs connect their platform with the supplier’s inventory so that their visitors can book hotels directly from their website. This way, OTAs ensure to get every single hotel listed on its platform.  

3 Reasons Why OTAs Need Up-to-date Content 

OTAs give millions of customers the option to choose the best hotel according to their needs. However, since travel suppliers work on a large scale, OTAs often miss any recent content update (addition or removal) of hotel properties. This has a significant impact on OTAs business. Here are three reasons why OTAs need updated content. 

However, this dynamic industry is constantly changing, and to stay relevant in the competitive market, OTAs need to provide up-to-date content to their consumers.  

1. Enhanced Brand Value 

For OTAs to be successful, the right and latest content are fundamental. If your website has not been updated with the newest hotel content, your brand value can be impacted. 

For example, two new hotel properties are launched in a city, and if an OTA fails to add the properties on their platform, then they are clearly missing out on new business. This affects brand value and customer expectations.  

2. Better Business Profits 

For an OTA, their website is the virtual store of their business. Accurate hotel data are like key objects in the display windows. It captures shoppers’ interest to engage and find out more about your website. By producing quality content, businesses can attract more traffic to their websites, leading to higher conversions rate. 

Citing the example in the above pointer, if OTA misses two new properties in a city, then there can be drop-in conversion rates affecting the business revenues. 

3. Improves Brand Trust 

Delivering accurate hotel content on your platform is one of the best ways to build trust with your customers. Quality content helps your customers with the information they need and shows that you are proficient in your business area. Imagine being able to generate revenue only through your reputation. 

Recommended: How to Choose Hotel Mapping Services? 

Hotel Mapping Solution for Updated Content 

Technology plays a dramatic role in minimizing the negative impact of outdated content. OTAs struggling to keep up with up-to-date content can easily rely on hotel mapping solutions.  

Hotel Mapping is a method of aggregating hotel properties from multiple sources in an organized manner that removes duplicate listings while ensuring hotel inventory is up-to-date and accurately mapped. Hotel mapping streamlines the process of displaying available inventory and dynamic content to the customer. This lets OTAs focus on delivering a better user experience to their customers. 

Outdated hotel information on your platform can easily hurt your business. With multi-inventory sources and fragmented distribution channels, it is imperative to have the latest and most accurate content on your platform. If your website is struggling to attract attention from visitors, it might be time to delve deeper into your hotel content. Content plays an important role in the booking process. An OTA’s platform should answer every question by the consumer, else the booking conversion rate can quickly drop, creating a domino effect on their business.