Kommersant: Russian services have not yet managed to take a share of the departed Booking

In the year that has passed since the departure of Booking.com from Russia, domestic online hotel booking services have not managed to take a significant part of the vacated market share, writes “Kommersant”.

According to Travelline, in the first 2.5 months of 2023, the share of direct sales of hotel rooms by Russian hoteliers increased by 28 p.p. on average across the country. year on year and amounted to 52%. The share of bookings with online travel agencies (OTA) over the same period decreased from 76% to 48%. Bnovo noted that the volume of direct sales of rooms by the hotel owners themselves tripled – up to 74.25% of the total volume sold.

The increase in direct sales after the departure of Booking.com may be due to better rates of accommodation on hotel websites, and OTAs operating now are forced to compete with themselves and hotels on market terms. According to CORE.XP consultant Anna Sabirova, the commission charged by OTA to hoteliers averages 10% compared to 18% for Booking.com.

At the same time, the industry notes the emergence of applicants for the market share of Booking.com, the newspaper notes. CEO MTS Travel Vadim Melnikov, for example, stressed that the cost of attracting customers to the site for hotels will only grow, so in the future cooperation with OTA will again become simply more profitable.

Now the leaders among Russian services are Ostrovok.ru with a share of 25.05% of all OTA sales, as well as “Yandex Travel” with a share of 16.17%.