Hotel Distribution II: Will Tech Giants Change Everything?.

“In the past 11 years, the landscape has changed. There has been a huge evolution on the part of OTAs. The elements of that evolution include the development of loyalty programs by OTAs themselves.” John Burns, president of Hospitality Technology Consulting. He adds “And now we have alternative distribution in the form of metasearch engines like Kayak and TripAdvisor and the ever-changing capabilities of Google.”

Some like Bonnie Buckhiester, president of Buckhiester Management, think that the OTAs will be the “little guys” as even bigger forces emerge that may well replace traditional OTAs like Orbitz, hotels.com and booking.com with ‘metamediaries’ – like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. These are the new technology giants who are entering the travel marketplace creating a new category of intermediary.”

Buckhiester also point out that other forces like TripAdvisor (TA) are also contenders for disruption. In fact TA is already just that with 200 million visitors a month and over 100 million reviews that people trust.

“They have a very strong consumer franchise with almost nine of 10 travelers saying that a review on TripAdvisor helps them feel more confident. Change will be coming from these metamediaries.”

Fpor more on how Gllogle and Other Metamediaries are changing travel see – How Googles Carousel is changing Travel This link will also link to other related topics.