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Online travel giants like Hotels.com and Booking.com have gained increasing influence and power in the tourism industry in recent years. Now, four Danish hotels are breaking with international booking portals like booking.com and hotels.com, writes the Danish newspaper Børsen on Monday night.
The Guldsmeden hotel chain has merged with Arthur Hotels, Andersen & Absalon Hotels and Hotel Skt. Annæ on breaking away from international booking websites and building a new Danish portal. It will be called Coolcopenhagen and may be in operation from April 2021.
For Børsen, Sandra Weinert, who is behind the Guldsmeden hotel chain, says that booking platforms charge between 15 and 23 percent of each reservation. It was a total of 16.4 million Danish crowns, which corresponds to 8 percent of the turnover in hotels in Copenhagen. In the same year, the hotel chain made a profit of 8 percent.
– We have been consuming our own fat since August 31. So it helps little that we have to pay a commission the size of our total profit – those are incredibly large bills, says Weinert.
The couple Marc Weinert and Sandra Weinert are behind the Guldsmeden hotel chain, which has several hotels in Copenhagen and one in Vika in Oslo. Here are the two on the roof of the Oslo hotel when it opened. (Photo: Christopher Olssøn)
– We have to earn more money with our product than before the crisis. Otherwise, he believes that we will not survive the next crisis.
The construction of the new Danish reservation portal will be paid in part by the hotels themselves and in part by a restructuring assistance package from Copenhagen City Council. The plan is that 10 percent of what hotel guests pay through the platform will be commissions and will go to marketing Copenhagen as a tourist destination.
– We cannot sit back and watch the money flow to someone who does not develop tourism in Denmark. They are completely indifferent if it is Stockholm or Copenhagen, says Weinert.
DN failed to get a response from the Guldsmeden hotel chain Monday night on whether the Norwegian Guldsmeden hotel at Vika in Oslo is now also breaking with international booking websites.
Almost all Norwegian hotels today have agreements with international reservation websites, although it is constantly debated in the industry whether it costs more than you know. The reason is both high commission rates, fear of losing guest property and so-called “price parity”; the requirement that hotels cannot sell rooms cheaper than the internet giants.
Torgeir Silseth, CEO of Petter A. Stordalen’s hotel chain Nordic Choice, has previously estimated that the Nordic hotel industry pays close to NOK 2 billion annually in commissions to international internet giants such as Booking.com, Hotels.com and Google.
– We alone now pay around NOK 250 million annually in such commissions. It’s a big challenge, he told DN in 2018.
– This is money that goes from our value creation directly out of the country to the United States or the Netherlands or wherever these players are located.
For hotels, the battle is about getting as many customers as possible to book a room directly with them. Because if the guest books through Hotels.com, Booking.com and other third-party channels, the hotels have to pay a commission of 15 to 25 percent.
In recent years, traditional Norwegian hotels like Fjellhotellet Finse1222 and the family-owned Hotel Ullensvang in Lofthus in Hardanger have withdrawn from any cooperation with internet travel giants. Fjellhotellet Finse1222 broke with platforms two years ago.
– Of course it’s scary, said the hotel manager, Laila Hjellvoll at the time. (Terms)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and / or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases via a link, which leads directly to our pages. Copying or other use of all or part of the content may only be done with written permission or as permitted by law. For more terms, see here.
