Staying in parity is one of the most fundamental pillars to have in place if you want to drive direct bookings. Price Check and the Parity Monitoring dashboard are designed to ensure that you are tracking accurate parity data, and are always showing your customers that you have the best rates available.

But what happens when you don’t? Fixing disparities takes time - and while all the details you need to replicate a disparity can be found in the Parity Monitoring dashboard, getting in touch with OTAs and getting them resolved doesn’t always happen instantly.

On those occasions when you are not in parity, there is a Targeted Messaging option you can use to continue to drive direct bookings.

Create a Pricing Message to display when you're being undercut

A Pricing Message can be used when a guest has run a search on your website and you’re not in parity. It appears instead of Price Check and allows you to acknowledge that they may have found a better price elsewhere, and encourage them to get in touch with directly to sort that out. You can set these up yourself in the Message Builder, just as you would for any other message type. Then just edit the content to let guest know that you’ll price match or offer additional benefits if they choose to book with you.

Here’s how it looks:

If a guest is interested enough in your hotel to run a search on your website it’s a wasted opportunity not to try to convince them to book direct, regardless of whether or not you’re being undercut. Use messaging to continue to drive direct, even when you’re not in parity.