Amazon to launch travel site with hotel booking capability

Amazon to launch travel site with hotel booking capability
By admin


Online retailer Amazon will launch its own travel service for independent hotels across key drive-markets in the USA.

Exclusively revealed by Skift, the new Amazon Travel will feature a selection of curated hotels a few hours’ drive from New York, Los Angeles and Seattle earmarked to go live early January.

According to the report, properties would load their room types, availability and price – rack rates or discounted – into Amazon’s extranet and pay the company the industry standard 15% commission for bookings or negotiate a lower commission with Amazon.

The report states hoteliers who have been approached by Amazon Travel are giving “heavy consideration” to participating in the new scheme.

The hotelier who hadn’t yet signed up for the Amazon Travel service after being approached by an Amazon sales representative two weeks ago said he was giving “heavy consideration” to participating.

The hotelier quoted by Skift said Amazon had used TripAdvisor ratings as part of the criteria for selecting properties to participate, and would only use a few properties per destination.

Amazon could potentially have an advantage over some OTA’s and hotel booking sites because of its wealth of customer data, which could be used to pair retail offerings with suggested travel destinations. 

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