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Hotels versus web
Jun 15, 06 1:59 am
Australia's leading hotel owners are pushing for greater online quality control standards to protect the increasing number of people booking their holidays on the internet.While websites such as wotif.com, which took the stock market by storm when it listed this month, are well-known and trusted, they are being joined by an increasing number of online operators promoting and selling holiday products.
Australian Hotels Association national affairs director Bill Healey says his organisation is not promoting a national accreditation scheme, but more needs to be done to ensure truth in online advertising.
Mr Healey says problems such as residential properties being marketed as tourist accommodation have arisen in southern markets, and similar stories are starting to emerge in Brisbane.
"What you'll find is that when in Sydney, for example, the rental market tightens owners will let (the properties) out as short-term holiday lets," he says.
Mr Healey says AHA is working with AAA Tourism, the national tourism body of the country's auto clubs that provides star ratings to properties, to develop processes that clearly identify the types and quality of accommodation sold online.
AHA is also working to develop and promote the use of the international web address .travel to verify accommodation providers.
State and Federal Government tourism bodies have already moved to provide consistent, reliable online data through the formation of the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse. ATDW, based in Brisbane, collates and cleans information provided by tourism operators and sends that information to websites which market tourism products.
General manager Liz Ward says her company has a robust data management system that means they have heard few complaints about consumers' expectations not being met by service providers.
"The state and territory agencies control the data that comes to us and have a one-to-one relationship with the suppliers," she says.
Ms Ward says with the number of consumers booking their travel online increasing, ATDW has recently signed an agreement to provide data to major online tourism portal About-Australia.com.
She says this is a boost for regional and smaller operators and has already resulted in a substantial increase in inquiries and bookings.
ATDW says findings by Hitwise, a company that measures online visits to websites, show the number of travel websites visited has doubled from 665 to 1244 from April 2005 to April 2006.
In further evidence of a maturing online travel market, a recent survey by internet travel retailer Zuji showed that consumers were increasingly using the web for advance bookings, not just last-minute travel.
In 2006, less than 25 per cent of its customers booked in the same week of travel, compared with 35 per cent two years ago.
The Zuji survey also found the number of paper tickets issued has halved in the past two years.
Mr Healey agrees there has been a shift towards consumers buying their travel products online, and that major brands are moving to shore up their share of the market.
"It was pretty much a Greenfield site for Graeme Wood (Wotif.com CEO) when he started," Mr Healey says. "Now, the major groups are taking greater control of managing their web strategy.
"They don't want to drive business away from their own sites, and so their policies are that their own portals have the best price."