Portugal’s Hotel Association (AHP) is to launch an online booking platform for the country's hotels as this has been identified as the way people like to make reservations.
This international trend has been spotted, albeit rather late, by the hoteliers association which now has applied for community funds to develop and launch the new site which aims to aggregate all Portugal’s hotels into one new super website.
The new platform to be launched in 2017 will show all hotel offers in Portugal, allowing customers to compare prices and look at all the available offers and promotions.
The president of AHP, Raul Martins, explained that the website is a bookings site and will not process payments.
AHP's executive president, Cristina Siza Vieira, added that the new site will show all the available offers and forward any reservations to the chosen hotels.
Asked if this new business tool will only be available to AHP members or to the industry in general, Vieira replied that "it will be for everyone."
The objective, she said, is "not to enter into direct competition with booking.com, in what would be a losing battle, it’s just to allow each hotelier to promote their prices, for example".
The two AHP officials admit that there are hotels in Portugal where 90% of the business depends on reservations made through booking.com.
As for how much the new site will cost, the AHP managers did not suggest a figure, but said that EU funds under the Compete - the System of Incentives to Collective Actions (SIAC), will contribute 70%.
Comments
They charge hotels a whopping 10% of the reservation fee.
10%!
Hotels aren't earning that much for themselves, after all the investment, risk, and work.
Those online booking sites are a really good service, but they're a huge unregulated tax on the hotel industry.
It's high time to offer an alternative.
By the way, if you find a hotel on any of the big websites, you can then look for the individual hotel website and usually book directly, cheaper.