Price Match on Metasearch

Price Match on Metasearch is a proactive measure that solves undercuts before the guest even sees they exist. This works by adjusting the direct price each individual guest sees on metasearch - by ‘just enough’ to make sure it’s cheaper direct ultimately driving guests towards your direct website.

We then make the same adjustment for that guest on the booking engine after they click through to secure the direct booking.

If your booking engine provides discounting capabilities in the form of promotional codes/coupon codes, you can share incremental discount codes with us. The more increments the better accuracy in matching closer to the undercut price, minimising budget waste.

E.g. I want to price match up to 7% in increments of 1%. Therefore I will provide 7 codes each for 1%, 2%, 3% and so on, up until 7%.

You decide which OTAs you would like to Price Match (we can help you choose) and we will only ever discount your price on metasearch for those selected OTAs.

Triptease applies them dynamically to the price feed and when the relevant meta auction happens, Triptease Price Match will display the updated rate with a price discounted up to x% and strikethrough offer (like this but better). Conversion rate increases, everyone wins 😎 (except OTAs).

Typically we see that undercuts, particularly from larger brands of OTAs are often within the 5% or maybe even lower amounts. This means that quite small movements in price could make a big difference in parity against those bigger brands and it is those bigger brands that have the most impact on your click-through-rate than if you were being undercut by an untrustworthy random.com. Small discounts, big wins.

In terms of granularity, because pricing is so dynamic, it is very guest dependant. One guest might see a price and another guest could search a different itinerary a few days later and see a very different price. Triptease automatically changes which discount code is applied for each specific guest and applies the smallest discount required to get you into parity.

Triptease works by integrating with your direct website and booking engine that let’s us see prices and how guests behave and get the data that we need in order to bid effectively and measure how metasearch is working for you.

The mechanism that Triptease use in order to control the prices works through promo codes/discount codes/coupon codes (depending on the booking engine you are using). If your booking engine supports those then we can apply the correct code that’s needed for us to change the price in the way that we want.

The capability of your booking engine is in question here. Whilst some booking engines use a % based mechanism, others use a fixed value based mechanism. What we need to know for this feature to work is how much the price is going to change when we apply a code. Predominantly we use % however we have seen booking engines do this by value too. This does not have an effect on the execution, what matters is the more granular range of codes we can apply, the more accurate we can be to avoid over discounting.

This concern has come up frequently in our research - and we’ve built this in a way to ensure hoteliers are always in control. Price matching is a controlled mechanism. We’re applying discounts to the base direct rate, not “copying” the OTA rate, so we’ll never discount more than a hotelier has selected. The feature can be turned on and off, only activated when needed. There’s therefore no risk of a price war.

We’re really precise about how much we discount. We only discount to guests who need a discount, and only by the minimum amount required.

There is a chance of OTAs and other channels discounting their price down to match you however as we pre-defined a discount, we will not discount further which demonstrates the level of control you have. Although we can’t say watching others eat their own margins isn’t enjoyable.

This would be your cheapest double occupancy, this might be your bar rate or your existing lowest rate. These are the rules of Metasearch.

Yes, we report this within the Data Marketing Platform where you can see how many guests saw prices discounted by each amount, how many clicked and how many booked. This means you will see a breakdown of what’s happened in terms of how much you need to discount. Maybe you were offering between 1-10% but we never needed to use the discounts more than 5% and so you dial down. These metrics of course change over time and so we are including it in the platform for visibility across time so you can make changes and the right decisions on discount amount. Metasearch is fast paced activity where things change rapidly but you are in control.