hadmin, Author at Hoteliqa

Aug 21

OTA commissions

By hadmin Hoteliqa

The Hidden Cost of OTA Commissions: Why Direct Bookings Matter More Than Ever

For many hotels, online travel agencies (OTAs) like Booking.com and Expedia feel unavoidable. They promise visibility and global reach—but at a steep price. While OTAs can help fill rooms, the commissions they charge—often 15% to 25% per booking—quietly eat away at hotel profits.

For a 50-room hotel with strong occupancy, OTA commissions can easily add up to tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds annually—money that never reaches the hotel’s bottom line.

Less Profit, Less Investment

Every euro lost in commission is a euro that can’t be reinvested. Hotels rely on healthy margins to:

Upgrade rooms and facilities: Modern guests expect refreshed interiors, high-quality furnishings, and updated amenities. OTA fees reduce the budget for renovations.
Improve staff wages and training: Hospitality is about people. Commission-heavy bookings make it harder to reward teams or invest in professional development.
Enhance guest experience: Investments in wellness programs, local partnerships, or tech solutions that improve convenience often get delayed when margins shrink.
Market the property independently: Ironically, the more you spend on OTAs, the less you have to invest in direct marketing—keeping you locked into dependence on external platforms.

The Dependency Trap

Perhaps the biggest hidden cost of OTAs is strategic, not financial. Heavy reliance on OTA channels means hotels surrender control of:

Customer relationships: OTAs own the guest’s data, making it harder to build long-term loyalty.
Pricing flexibility: Commission structures often restrict creative offers or discounts.
Brand identity: Guests remember they booked through Booking.com, not your hotel website.

This dependency erodes brand strength and leaves hotels vulnerable if OTA terms shift further in the future.

The Case for Direct Bookings

Shifting even a fraction of bookings away from OTAs can transform hotel finances. A 20% swing in channel mix often equates to tens of thousands of euros in savings—funds that can be redirected into property improvements, technology upgrades, or guest services.

Direct bookings also mean:

You own the guest relationship from the start.
You can craft personalized experiences that build loyalty.
You control pricing, offers, and packages without commission pressure.

Investing in Your Future

Every euro saved on commission is an investment in the future of your hotel. Whether it’s upgrading your rooms, enhancing digital marketing, or creating memorable guest experiences, direct revenue has a multiplier effect. Instead of enriching global OTA platforms, those funds can strengthen your business, staff, and community.

Bottom line: OTAs will always play a role in hospitality distribution, but unchecked dependence is costly. By prioritizing direct bookings—through your website, marketing efforts, and smart tools—you protect profits and ensure your hotel has the resources to reinvest, grow, and thrive.

Aug 21

DealDesk: The Smart WordPress Plugin

By hadmin Hoteliqa

Boost Your Hotel’s Profit with DealDesk: The Smart WordPress Plugin

Hotels using WordPress now have a powerful way to capture more direct bookings, reduce costly commissions, and grow profits—Meet DealDesk, the AI‑powered assistant from Hoteliqa.

Direct Bookings, Zero Commission

DealDesk enables guests to submit booking offers directly on your site—no middlemen, no fees. Once a guest makes an offer, the plugin sends it to your team for review, and you can confirm the booking directly, keeping 100% of the revenue. No more commission fees to intermediaries—just more money in your pocket.

AI Personalization: Your Hotel, at Its Core

What sets DealDesk apart is personalization. When you install the plugin, you upload details about your property—up to 200 A4 pages worth. DealDesk learns unique aspects of your hotel: location cues, amenities, policies, messaging style, and more. This means guests get smart, relevant responses that feel tailored—because they are.

Simple, Effective Workflow

The plugin is designed to be hassle‑free:

Guest makes an offer—they propose booking dates and price.
You receive the details via email, review it, and decide.
Confirm the booking directly, knowing you’re pocketing the full amount.

No complex setup, no steep learning curve. It’s an intuitive addition to your WordPress site that pays for itself quickly.

Built for Guests—and Hoteliers

The convenience of DealDesk isn’t just for hotels—it makes booking easy and engaging for guests, too. They can propose offers and see quick responses without navigating third-party platforms. It’s a seamless experience that builds trust and satisfaction.

Meanwhile, hotels love that they’re not handing over revenue to OTAs. Guests feel empowered, and properties gain autonomy—an ideal win‑win.

Affordable & No Hidden Fees

At just £9 per month, with no setup fees, DealDesk is affordable for hotels of all sizes. That minimal monthly cost is quickly offset by the percentage saved by avoiding OTA commissions.

Why Your WordPress Hotel Should Act Now

If you run your property’s website on WordPress, DealDesk is a no-brainer:

Capture higher-value direct bookings without commissions
Deliver personalized, AI-powered guest engagement
Easy, plug-and-play installation
Low monthly cost
Field-tested by real hotels with glowing reviews

Bottom line: DealDesk is more than a plugin—it’s a revenue-boosting tool that turns passive site visitors into engaged, commission-free bookings. If you’re aiming to grow profit, streamline operations, and give guests a uniquely tailored experience, this is your edge.

Jul 08

AI and Hotel Transformation

By hadmin Uncategorized

How AI Chatbots Are Transforming Hotel Operations and Guest Experience

Streamlined Room Booking
AI-powered chatbots have revolutionized how guests book hotel rooms. Instead of navigating complex booking systems or waiting for staff responses, users can now interact directly with a chatbot to check availability and secure a reservation in real time. These bots pull live data from hotel systems, making the process seamless, accurate, and fully automated.

24/7 Customer Support
One of the most valuable features of chatbots is their ability to handle customer inquiries instantly — anytime, day or night. They respond to common questions, reduce wait times, and deliver consistent support even during peak hours or outside business times. This always-on service boosts guest satisfaction and reduces pressure on hotel staff.

Personalized Travel Recommendations
AI-driven chatbots don’t just respond — they adapt. By analyzing guest preferences and previous interactions, they can suggest local restaurants, attractions, or upcoming events tailored to each individual. This personalization adds value to the guest experience and strengthens loyalty.

Reputation & Brand Monitoring
Beyond customer service, chatbots also support online brand management. They can monitor reviews and social media mentions, helping hotels gather feedback and identify trends. These insights guide marketing efforts and enhance reputation strategies.

Dynamic Price Optimization
Using machine learning, AI tools help hotels set smarter room rates. By analyzing occupancy trends, competitor pricing, and market demand, dynamic pricing systems adjust rates to maximize revenue — without manual intervention. The result is stronger profitability and more competitive offerings.

Final Thoughts
AI chatbots are no longer optional in the hospitality space — they’re essential. From simplifying bookings and providing 24/7 service to optimizing pricing and improving guest personalization, they empower hotels to operate more efficiently and connect with guests more meaningfully.

Jun 27

AI Agents

By hadmin Uncategorized

What is an AI Agent?

You’ve most likely heard the term ‘AI Agents’ or even ‘Agentic AI’. But what is this and how might it apply to your hotel? That is going to be the topic of our discussion today.

Chatbots

We got used to chatting with chatbots like ChatGPT. We use them for many day to day tasks in the home such as giving us recipes, giving DIY advice, how to clean something and even how to make something. With multi modal chatbots, we can now even send them pictures.

How do AI Agents differ?

Let’s first consider what we mean and understand by an agent. We have travel agents, modeling agencies, secret agents. These are people in roles where they make things happen for us. They have an objective, and they carry out often multiple tasks to achieve the objective. An example would be booking a family holiday with everything included (travel, insurance, hotel, excursions, car hire). This would be what we expect from a travel agent. So an agent does stuff on our behalf in order to fulfill an objective we set it.

AI Agents follow the same principle. It is no longer just asking a question and getting an answer like with a chatbot. With AI agents, we can give them an objective and let them carry out tasks on our behalf to achieve the objective and then they let us know when they have finished. This changes the role of AI and how we can use it in our work.

Let’s consider the example of AI Agents which are already available.

Both Google and Open AI have introduced the idea of deep research agents. This is AI that can be given a research objective, plus relevant documents, and will carry out research using publicly available sources on the internet to come up with a viewpoint or answer to the research question. Scientists are using this type of agentic AI to rapidly speed up how they can review academic papers.

How could AI Agents be used for hotels?

Guest contact and relationship management has been a key feature of hospitality for many years. All large hotel brands have their own loyalty program which offers their guests many benefits. But loyalty programs need managing and appropriate offers need to be sent to loyal guests at the appropriate time. And segmentation is important. The appropriate offers should be send to the appropriate guests (e.g. business, young couple, retired).

This is where AI agents will soon be able to manage this relationship and deliver improved customer service to the guests. AI agents can be given instant access to guest data, including their history and preferences. The AI agent can decide which offers are appropriate to send to which guests and when. The AI agent can also monitor responses from guests and alert reservation specialists to booking or upsell opportunities.

Very soon we will see AI agents taking on roles like this in hospitality and performing these tasks very efficiently and to the benefit of both the guest and the hotel.

Hoteliqa has worked in guest relationship management for many years with many of our client hotels. As agentic technology becomes more mature, we will be offering AI agent services to our hotel customers just as we now offer unique hotel chat.

Jun 24

About Hoteliqa

By hadmin Hoteliqa

Hoteliqa Ltd was founded in January 2020 to provided software services to hotels.

During the pandemic years Hoteliqa spent a lot of time talking with hoteliers about what would add value to their businesses. Getting more direct bookings and avoiding the big commissions hotels have to pay to the OTAs was a constant theme of these discussions.

Towards the end of 2023, ChatGPT came online and the possibilities and opportunities to use this new AI technology to deliver on these hotel priorities became clear..

Hoteliqa has embraced this opportunity from the start and is at the forefront of using AI to create a better guest experience and higher satisfaction, while at the same time improving hotel productivity and reducing costs.

We expect this journey will continue for many years to come, with huge innovation in the hospitality experience being enabled through multi modal AI. We are determined that Hoteliqa will take a leading part in this innovation and we look forward with great excitement and enthusiasm to working with all our hotel partners.

We are appreciative of all our hotel partners for letting us work with them. We recognize that they work extremely hard ‘on the front line’ to deliver fantastic experiences to their guests.

Hoteliqa is based in London and partners with hotels across Europe.

Hoteliqa Ltd, 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ

Aug 28

AI Trends

By hadmin Trends

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming all industries. The hospitality industry is rapidly embracing this change. For independent hotels, being part of these developments isn’t just beneficial—it’s essential to satisfy your guests’ expectations and remain competitive. Here we discuss two important AI based trends which hotels are adopting and you can implement now, without a lot of time or costs.

Enhanced in-stay guest experience

For many years, hotel chatbots have been clunky and unable to handle the wide variety of guest queries. They were based upon rules and scripts which had to be pre-defined. If the guest asked something beyond what had been programed in the script, the chatbot had to hand over the chat to a real person. This situation was far from ideal and caused a great deal of guest frustration. Often guests would just not use the hotel chatbot, since it was so limited in functionality.

With the new generation of ChatGPT like AI, this has all changed. Chatbots are no longer constrained by pre-written scripts and rules.

The new generation of AIs can actually understand natural language (and most can understand different versions of natural language e.g. English, French, German, Mandarin etc.) and hold a conversation, as most people have now experienced. This gives the chatbot a massive advantage over its predecessors and allows it to engage with the guest in a meaningful way.

With the new generation AI, the hotel chatbot can now be trained the on all the facts and information about the hotel, and in detail. These are things like the different room types, what restaurant facilities the hotel has, is there a pool, are pool towels provided, off-street parking for a hire car etc. etc. ALL information about the hotel and even local attractions and events can be trained into the hotel chatbot. This enables the AI to be unique and specific for the hotel, and makes the AI extremely helpful and accurate at answering the detailed questions that guests have. The guest gets an immediate answer to their question and the hotel staff are not tied up answering multiple questions which the hotel chatbot can answer very easily. And this is not just a time saving, there is also in increase in guest satisfaction.

The hotel chatbot is also instructed to only answer questions about the hotel. This avoids the AI answering guests’ questions which are not related to their stay and is an important feature of the new generation of AIs.

AI-Driven Pricing and Lead Generation
AI enables hotels to implement dynamic, data-driven pricing strategies, ensuring competitiveness while maximizing revenue. AI systems continuously analyze market trends, competitor rates, seasonal demand, and historical booking data to recommend optimal pricing adjustments in real-time. For instance, AI tools might identify upcoming high-demand periods and proactively adjust room rates to maximize revenue opportunities.

Moreover, AI can interact directly with potential guests pre-booking, discerning their price sensitivity and interest levels. For example, when potential guests engage with hotel websites or booking interfaces, AI hotel chat systems can intelligently gauge their desired price range and preferences. This information can then be automatically relayed to the front desk as actionable leads. Hotel staff can then proactively engage with these guests, negotiate personalized rates, and convert interest into confirmed bookings, creating a more flexible and personalized reservation experience.

Conclusion
By embracing these AI trends, independent hotels can significantly enhance guest satisfaction, streamline pricing strategies, and generate valuable leads—without substantial investments or complex implementations. Adopting these technologies early positions your hotel strategically in a competitive market, ensuring both short-term gains and long-term success.