Online Travel Agencies

If you have you been wondering where you can find a list of online travel agencies in 2022 than this post is for you.

This post covers the list of the best websites for Hotels, Hostels, Holiday Rentals, apartments and basically all hospitality properties. I cover some basic answers, but additional information about each of the OTA’s.

An additional resource is this post in order to get more positive reviews on these online travel agencies.

As much as we do not want to work with OTA’s and oppose the way they work, because some of them have large commissions and that we are completely tied to them for a long time, it is still unthinkable not to have your accommodation at least up to two online travel agencies.

If we are getting reservations to our property from any Online Travel Agency it would be wrong to assume that they are direct reservations.

When I started to work in the Hotel business 10 years ago, the first hurdle I came upon was OTA’s. As a new hotelier, I knew some of them, the most visited and those to which I was looking for accommodation for personal needs.

Even if these sites were successful I didn’t know which is the right one for my hotel.

Because some of them were hurting my revenue.

So i decided to start testing them, and through trial and error you will see that some Online Travel Agencies work better for you than the rest.

The main factors when comparing Each OTA’s were:

• Commissions, Extra Costs, Hidden Fees
• OTA Reputations, Visits, localization.
• Cancellation Rate (huge factor – some sites were “booking” my rooms months before, and were canceling 2 weeks before, so often i was left with an empty room)
• Property Views
• How does the OTA do their Marketing and how they advertise your property.
• Competition
• Pricing
• Revenue

The purpose why I create this year list of travel agency websites is to reduce your time searching and make it a smooth process of research, and at the end to find the right OTA for your property.

If you are new into this, i also recommend  you read this small resource in order to find the right pricing strategy for your property.

But first lets answer some questions. If you are not interested in this information just scroll down to see the list of Online Travel Agencies in 2022.

Should I submit my property to all of these OTA’s?

No, you should not submit your property to all of the OTA’s mentioned here, simply because of the fact that they are hard to synchronize and manage at the same time.

There are also the fees, and some of them might not get you even few visitors a year. Also there is the part of duplicate and canceled reservations that can hurt your revenue.

It is highly recommended that you do some additional research if you are planning to submit your property there.

This means submitting your property to the ones that will bring you revenue, and that are effective for your location. You must test this on your behave.

If you submit your property to all of these OTA’s it is very difficult to synchronize the calendars and your property listing might suffer on some of the sites.

Of course there are some solutions that i will mention that can help you manage all of your listings and synchronize their calendars at the same time.

What are Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s)?

Online travel agencies are online companies that through their web pages allow travelers to quickly and directly find accommodation capacity for their needs.

It is well accepted by travelers, in this quick time of living, it’s great that a hotel can be booked via a mobile phone, right? That’s why they are here OTA, to facilitate and shorten the time of those who want to travel, but also to help the owners or managers of any type of property to sell their rooms more easily and quickly.

OTA uses powerful marketing to advertise properties that are on their website, and for this, they take a commission from property owners.

How do Online Travel Agencies work?

OTA’s Work by earning a fee from listing and selling your property occupancy. Each OTA has different commission fees depending on what type of accommodation you are listing and on which region belongs.

To sign up for every online travel agency, it’s not at all complicated, the most important thing is to know how it works and the expert OTA is right for your property type.

How many OTA’s are there?

Currently, there are over 400 OTAs, including all Global OTA’s, Meta-search Websites, OTA for hostels, vacation homes and properties, group bookings, business travel websites and many more.

At first, online travel agencies was popular for air travel, but later it was accepted by other booking sites.

How to use Online Travel Agency?

First and foremost is to find the best OTA for your property. It is best to follow the instructions and tips provided by each OTA.

Use their promotions and tools to sell your rooms more efficiently and more costly. Check the competition in your region, at what price you sell the rooms, check out what’s new, who use the privileges.

All this can be seen on any online travel agency if you are their member.

First of all and most important when you put your property on any OTA’s are those three segments:

• Location of your Property
  

Before you add a property on any OTA’s, you need to set the location on Google maps and Bing maps when you have the exact place on the map it will be easy for the guests to find your property. Set the distance from nearest Bus station, Airport, Train station, highway, etc.

This method works for almost every type of property. You just need to optimize  your Google My Business Listing.

• Description

Every traveler read the property description. So that is the main reason why you should have you a good description of the property. Make sure that everything that you will write on that description is right, with your own creative words. Write a unique story that everyone will notice.

• Use High Quality Photos for your OTA

Before placing your property on any OTA’s for listing make sure that you have pictures of the property, including photos of the rooms, apartments, lobby, and restaurant everything that your property has to offer. If you want to be sure about the quality of hotel photos, hire a professional photographer.

Emma’s TIP: Create a situation, something dramatic, unique that will make your property images stand out from the rest. Be Creative!

Example:

Top Online Travel Agencies List

It is crucial before you put your accommodation capacity listed, wisely choosing who or what is best for your type of property.

The below-listed websites are one of the best for any accommodation. No matter which you choose to be partnered with, you will make no mistake.

If you are proud owner of Hotel or rental property owner, these are the major and best websites for your property:

They aren’t listed by any particular order and there are no affiliate links.

Booking.com

Booking has over 19.000 employees in 70 countries worldwide. Their mission is to empower people to experience the world.

The Booking.com has 24/7 assistance and support available in more than 40 different languages. This website offers over 28M total reported listings and over than 135.285 destinations in 228 countries and locations all over the world.

To add your property on Booking.com first you need to go on the website and click on the LIST YOUR PROPERTY.

Make sure that you will add every single amenities that your property can offer to the guests.

After you will have permission for your property to get listed. Next step is to set the availability and rates of the rooms or apartments. In any time you can be able to make changes on availability or rates.

The commission that you’ll need to pay on Booking.com is 15% fee per booking and it will go up depending of what level of service you will choose.

My advice:

Don’t change the rates very often. Do that in season or out of season. If you want to have discounts for the guests, use the promotions that Booking.com has giving to you. Download Extranet mobile app and you can manage availability any time you want from your phone. Every time when you will receive a new reservation, you will have a notification on your phone.

Expedia

The biggest world’s travel platform with more than 200 travel booking sites in 75 countries.

Expedia has over 24.000 employees in more than 30 countries. This travel platform counts more then 1M properties, over 550 airlines, dozens of rental car companies and cruses lines, over than 1.6M online bookable vacation retails.

I think these numbers are quite enough to convince you that Expedia is a great choice to add your property for sale. Just think about that over 200 travel booking sites!!!

Expedia has two different platforms, one for the guests and one for the property owners.

Join Expedia here

When you fill the form list, you will receive a phone call from Expedia representative to proceed with the listing of your property. After that, your property will be visible and ready for sale for about 24 hours.
Than download the app on your smartphone and wait for new guests.

Hotels.com

• Hotels.com is an affiliate of Expedia Inc. and is a leading provider of hotel accommodation worldwide.

On this website you can list your property no matter what accommodation you own.

If your property is already listed on Expedia.com you don’t need to look for how or where to add your hotel for listing on Hotels.com.

But if you want to get listed first on Hotel.com here is the link

It’s good for you to know that when you will receive new booking from Hotel.com you’ll have notification on Expedia app on your phone because they are connected.

Agoda

One of the fastest growing travel booking platforms in the world.

Agoda has to offer over 1.9 M properties in 228 countries worldwide. On Agoda, you can list every accommodation, from Luxury hotel to budget hotels, apartments, villas, and homes.

Agoda.com is part of Booking Holdings Inc.

Agoda.com also has two platforms, one for the travelers and one for the owners. Just click on the Become A Host button to submit your property to Agoda

Priceline

• Priceline is part of Booking Holdings Inc.

Priceline offers like they say more ways to save and more deals than anyone else in travel. Priceline.com is using the same platform as Agoda.com for registration.

So if you register on Agoda, your property would be available on Priceline too.

Travelocity

Travelocity team believe that fulfilling travel experience begins not only with choosing the right destination but having the right state of mind.

Travelocity.com is part of Expedia group, and because that is using Expedia platform for Owners.

This is the link where you can add your property on Travelocity.com

Orbitz.com

• Owned by Expedia Inc.

If you want your property to be listed on this website first you need to list your property on Expedia and automatically your property will be listed on Orbitz.com

Hrs.com

If you want to be part of a family of HRS that has more than 20M visitors per month on their websites, just go to their website and place your hotel on Hotel Reservation Service (HRS)

HRS has subtitles in 14 languages, including Chinese, Russian, Japanese, in order to be viewed and available for sale in those parts of the world.

Travelrepublic.com

Travelrepublic is European online travel agency but it has listed properties around world and the most wanted destinations, with more than 2M tourist visit on their website.

Online Travel Agencies for Vacation Rentals, Villas, Apartments

If you have vacation rental or villas and you need websites where you can sell your property, these are the most visited websites:

Airbnb.com

One of the best websites for rentals and bookings. In short time the company made an extremely big database of properties.

Airbnb.com can offer accommodation of millions of places to stay in more than 100.000 cities and 191 countries worldwide. On Airbnb, you can list different kind of properties, from apartments to Vilas, B&B, castles, and treehouses. The essential thing that you should know is that mor than 150 milion people are using airbnb.com for their searching for accommodation. For sure you will want your property to one of the 5.6M listings on this fastgrowing site.

Note: Airbnb has the lowest fee for the host service- it’s 3%

If you think that Airbnb.com is right for you, just go on their main website, on the right side there is a click on the bottom BECOME A HOST.

Airbnb also offers for you to Host an Experience where you can earn some revenue by leading people on activities you/they love.

Find out more about Airbnb hosting.

Homeaway.com

HomeAway can help your property to be alive for reservations in 190 countries and over 50 sites.

Home away family is quite big, starting with

• VRBO – One of the Most Popular Vacation Rental Sites in US
• Vacationrentals.com – Rent everything from cabins & condos to castles or villas. The whole house.
• Homelidays – France, Spanish, Italian
• Abritel – French
• FeWo-Direkt – German
• Toprural – Spanish, France, Portugal, Italy
• Bookabach – New Zeland
• Stayz – Australian site for renting Beach Houses, Apartments, Holiday Rentals, etc
• Alugue Temporada – Brasil

This is the link for adding your property on HomeAway

Homeaway.com has an opportunity for those who manage more than 10 properties, it give you chance to register like property manager.

Flipkey

Flipkey is part of the family of Tripadvisor rentals.

They advertise everything except hotels. It’s free to add your property on Flipkey, they deduct 3% from your guest’s payment.

If you manage more than 5 properties you can contact the team of Tripadvisor rentals and they will certainly help you.

9flats.com

If you have extra room, or entire house or apartment and if you are rental 9flats is just for you to advertise your property. You can get listed for free, but for every booking that guest is paying they will deduct 12-15% from total price.
HolidayLettings.com

HolidayLettings is also part of Tripadvisor rentals. Just like Flipkey, for listing you will pay nothing, and for every booking only 3% fee.

Register your rental property here.

OneFineStay.com

One Fine Stay is something different.

They work with houses were the owners are not home and want to earn extra money. If you are one of them, you can be part of this family.

Their team will come in to your house make an awesome photos, and before each stay they will prepare the house with their sheets, toiletries and towels.

Their team will meet the guests and when they left, they will clean and back in order before you return home.

Vacation-key.com

Vacation-Key.com is having three different options for your commission fee.

On this link you’ll find everything you need to know about adding your property on Vacation Key website.

List of OTA’s for Hostels

Below there is list of one of the best OTA’s for your Hostel in 2022

Hostelworld.com

Hostelworld in the first place is a website intended for hostels, but also you can list a hotel or B&B.

At this moment Hostelworld has 36,000 bookable properties over 170 countries and over a 7.5 Million bookings.

The extranet of Hostelsworld is simple and easy to manage.

Just follow the instructions and your property easy can be listed on Hostels Worldwide website.

Dorms.com

Dorms is one of the most complete directory of hostels in the world.

Dorms.com has over 30.000 hostels ready to book.

How can you sing up? Just go to the bottom of the page, there is section Extranet, click on that and fill in the list and there you go!

Hostelculure.com

If you want to be great promotional and part of the hosteling culture, Hostelculture.com will allow you register your hostel in a very simple way/a>

Hostelbookers.com

If you are a hostel owner, and you have decided that your target group should be young people or students, Hostelbooker.com will help you find the right guests for your hostel.

They are aimed at cheap, but nice accommodations.

Hostelbookers.com is a partner with Hostelworld.com, and they are using the same platform for registration and extranet.

Hosteltraveler.com

Hosteltraveler is best for you if you are an owner of a hostel, budget hotel and apartments. Mostly asked by younger population.

Gomio.com

Gomio has begun to work since 2004, so to date on their platform and website for social connection they have over 6000 connected hostels and budget accommodation.

Listing in Gomio is free of charge.

Commission fee for hostel bookings is 10%

They are not charging fee of the customer.
If you decide to become a partner with Gomio.com here the link that you can add your property:

Hostel247.com

The registration to Hostel247.com is for everyone who owns Hostel, B&B, budget Hotel, apartments or guest houses.

The commission fee is 10% per booking.

B&B OTA

When it comes bad&breakfast accommodations, there is no big opportunities for listing websites, but this has change recently with this websites:

Bedandbreakfast.com

Bed and Breakfast is the largest and most visited website in this category. If you want to be seen from 600 million visitors all you have to do is to sign in on Expedia Partner Central

List of Most Searched Travel Listing Websites

Below we have a small list of the most searched travel listings websites.

TripAdvisor.com

TripAdvisor.com the world largest travel community with over 600M reviews and opinions and that’s for sure is enough for covering the world’s largest selection of travel listing worldwide.

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