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Opaque hotel booking comes to Expedia.com

BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON Expedia Inc. is extending its Hotwire opaque model to Expedia.com, offering “unpublished rate” hotels throughout North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

Through this collaboration between sister companies Hotwire and Expedia.com, the more than 25,000 hotels participating in Hotwire will now have their opaque inventory offered on Expedia.com as well. Hotels will continue to manage and load their own room rates through Hotwire, allowing them access to additional demand for their unsold inventory. The final pricing and display information for the opaque rates on Expedia.com will also continue to be managed by Hotwire.

 “Hotel rooms are a perishable – you can’t sell yesterday’s rooms,” says Jay Hubbs, director of revenue management for Expedia Partner Services Group. “Expedia is extending its opaque model to allow hotels the opportunity to fill unsold rooms with customers that would have very likely otherwise booked a different property.”

Under the opaque model, travelers book a discounted rate up front knowing information about only the star rating, amenities and neighborhood location, and will then learn the hotel’s name after they have booked the room. With nearly 2 million unique shoppers visiting Expedia.com per day, the company has extended the reach of its opaque model, providing hotels the ability to discount in a targeted, need-based manner without compromising retail rates.

 “Optimizing RevPAR is a primary driver in revenue management, so hotels must look for ways to generate revenue wherever they can,” Hubbs says. “By extending the successful Hotwire opaque model to the larger Expedia.com marketplace, we are providing our hotel partners further distribution for their unsold inventory, resulting in incremental bookings to them, and helping them to maximize revenue across all our sites.”

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