Hotel rankings of online travel agents, channel pricing, and consumer protection

Matthias Hunold, Reinhold Kesler and Ulrich Laitenberger

No 18-059, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: We investigate whether online travel agents (OTAs) assign hotels worse positions in their search results if these set lower hotel prices at other OTAs or on their own websites. We formally characterize how an OTA can use such a strategy to reduce price differentiation across distribution channels. Our empirical analysis shows that the position of a hotel in the search results of OTAs is better when the prices charged by the hotel on other channels are higher. This is consistent with the hypothesis that OTAs alter their search results to discipline hotels for aggressive prices on competing channels, thereby reducing the search quality for consumers.

Keywords: consumer protection; free-riding; hotel booking; online travel agents; ranking; search bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D40 L42 L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ict, nep-pay and nep-tur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Hotel Rankings of Online Travel Agents, Channel Pricing and Consumer Protection (2019)
Working Paper: Hotel rankings of online travel agents, channel pricing and consumer protection (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:18059

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