If anyone knows the secrets of the hotel business, it’s Pat McCann.
Pat McCann is the founder and CEO of the Dalata Hotel Group, Ireland’s biggest of its kind, and has revealed how online booking sites don’t give a true reflection of how many rooms are available in a hotel at any one time.
Speaking to host Tadhg Enright on JOE’s The Architects of Business, in partnership with EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™, McCann revealed customers often feel pressured into making a booking when, in reality, plenty of rooms remain available.
“You see the difficulty for the third parties, the OTAs (Online Travel Agencies), is they’re only given a small allocation and they may only have one or two rooms left as part of their allocation,” he revealed.
“In reality the hotel may have more rooms through other channels, so it is not true. And I see the EU are beginning to outlaw that now, they think it’s an unfair practice, that they’re actually saying there are only two or three rooms left and it’s kind of forcing people to make a decision quicker than they would normally would, because they feel if they don’t (they’ll miss out).
“The airlines do this all the time as well. You’ll go on and you’ll see three seats left but that tends not to be true either.”
Listen to the full show here…
Pat was asked whether people realise this practice is taking place.
“I’m not sure that they do actually,” he responded. “I think people get a little bit nervous when they see limited availability and they say, ‘God, if we don’t do something there’s going to be nothing left’. So I think there’s some challenges around that that need to be rectified.”
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