Marketing Your Hotel to and through Intermediaries

Abstract

Meeting planners and travel agents could become an even more important distribution channel than they already are for hotels, provided that lodging operators understand the factors that create value for those important intermediaries. As part of Cornell's broad-based survey of best practices in the U.S. lodging industry, researchers conducted a survey to discover the hotel attributes and practices that create value for travel agents and meeting planners. The study found that the most important factor in the lodging transaction with intermediaries is a hotel's ability to make the hotel booking process as smooth as possible, including a problem-free stay for the clients. While location is, of course, the key factor in the intermediaries' choice of a hotel for their clients, travel agents indicated that the quality of communications, the hotel's brand name or reputation, and the quality of deals or incentives were also important in creating value in the booking transaction. While a good price is important, meeting planners additionally consider meeting and convention services and food-service quality as essential to creating value in a hotel transaction.