Major Booking Sites Still Won’t Allow Purchases in TripAdvisor’s App – Skift.

Not having  a booking engine of its own or the huge database of hotel rooms and rates that the OTAs have Trip advisor has been scrambling to partner with site like booking.com and Expedia for its new booking app.  It has not convinced its largest online travel agency partners to facilitate hotel bookings right within TripAdvisor apps.

While the new feature, Called Instant Booking, is a key part of TripAdvisor’s hotel metasearch strategy because it allows lookers to bookers right in the app without having to navigate away to a hotel and TripAdvisor will to collect higher costs per click and attract additional revenue.

Although OTAs all participate in TripAdvisor metasearch offering bookings on their own OTA websites, none of the major online travel agencies have optn in on direct booking within the TripAdvisor app. They are not eager to participate as it will strengthen an already powerful TripAdvisor, as well diminish the other commercial and branding of the OTA itself.

“OTAs (online travel agencies) expressed varying degrees of interest” in participating in Instant Booking, says TripAdvisor CEO Stephen Kaufer.