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2016 trends: Reviews, metasearch matter

Online reviews are king and the “sharing economy” will continue to enter the mainstream, according to Profitroom’s “Hotel Sales & Marketing Trends 2016” report. 

According to the report, hotels that are involved in obtaining guest opinions register 40% more views a month on average and 25% more visits to the hotel’s website. And sites like Airbnb and Uber, which both employ strong mobile applications to leverage overnight home rentals and ride-sharing, will continue to see huge success.

Metasearch engines such as Trivago and TripAdvisor—with Google getting into the game as well—will increase their influence as a sales channel, as the “model of cooperation” with those engines changes to focus more on direct booking. As a result, “hotels will not be competing for visibility in the Internet and direct bookings only with OTAs, but also with metasearch engines that cease to be independent platforms and are becoming a powerful competition for the hotels themselves.”

The report was prepared by Profitroom, which provides technology for reservation services for hotels and apartments, and Deloitte. 

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