Why Europe's Independent Hotels Can't Compete on Google Hotels

15.11.2023 - 15:41 / skift.com / Pranavi Agarwal / Skift Research

In Part I of our series on Google Travel, we analyzed the hotel distribution landscape in the U.S. by web-scraping over 5,000 hotels and their respective distribution offerings across Google’s sponsored and organic auctions.

In Part II of our series, we repeat our efforts across the European hotel market. We looked at 40 European cities and again web-scraped over 5,000 hotels to compare the distribution landscape in Europe versus the U.S. 

One of the key conclusions from our analysis: Direct sites compete head-on with online travel agencies (OTAs) more often in the U.S. than in Europe.

Though both markets are fairly mature with similar levels of online penetration, Europe’s hotel industry differs from the U.S. in three key ways:

Independent hotels – which make up the larger share of hotel rooms in Europe – are more likely to source their distribution from the OTAs vs. their direct site, usually lacking the marketing budgets, tech capabilities, and large loyalty programs of the branded hotels that are necessary to obtain direct bookings.

Even though Google’s introduction of organic listings now makes it free – and easier – for smaller independent hotels to list alongside the major brands and OTAs, there are still tech barriers in place, such as needing a connectivity partner to display real-time rates and availability. 

Therefore the direct site is less likely to feature in Europe – which skews more towards independent hotels – than the more branded U.S. market.

Read the full report for more comparitive analysis of the hotel distribution landscapes of the U.S. and Europe, presented in 20 impactful and digestible charts.

The underlying hotel supply in Europe is much less branded than it is in the U.S., meaning a greater reliance on OTAs for bookings. In turn there is a more fragmented online distribution market in Europe, with Google’s introduction of an organic auction providing further opportunity for smaller OTAs and new entrants to gain market share.

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