An online travel agency, or OTA for short, is the name given to an online platform, which allows customers to explore travel products and services, and make bookings online. Meanwhile, from the perspective of those in the hotel industry, OTAs serve as a means of generating bookings from customers who may not know about their hotel.
An OTA like Booking.com, for example, allows users to search for travel products, including hotels, flights, and airport transfers, while the Booking Extranet allows hotels to manage their own listing on the platform, in order to attract guests. When a booking is made, the online travel agency then takes a commission fee for facilitating the sale.
Booking.com is an online travel agency, with its headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The platform is primarily marketed as a website and mobile app for booking hotel rooms and other lodgings, although it also offers customers the opportunity to book flights, hotel + flight combination packages, car rentals, and airport taxis.
The platform itself is owned by Booking Holdings, Inc. and this parent company also owns a number of other major travel-related brands, including Priceline.com, Agoda.com, and Kayak.com.
Booking.com is available in almost 50 different languages and can boast more than 25 million listings. The platform was originally launched in 1996 and serves as a third-party, linking customers to hotels and travel businesses. Those businesses can utilise the Booking Extranet to manage their listings and access important information.
The Booking.com Extranet, or Booking Extranet, is a management platform that is connected to the Booking.com service. It allows those in hotel management positions – or management positions with other travel businesses – to oversee reservations and handle almost all aspects related to their listing on the online travel agency website.
For hotels, this includes options to add your hotel description, upload high-quality photographs of your hotel, outline the services available within your hotel, and manage important information that can affect bookings, such as updating current room availability and managing your room rates.
The Booking Extranet also includes a search engine, which makes it much easier to find specific information, along with a variety of tools for monitoring and analysing performance. Finally, the Booking Extranet provides hotels with options to participate in promotional offers and partner programmes.