Booking.com rate shopper alternatives
As you may have heard already, in late 2019 the OTA giant Booking.com, has decided to discontinue all products which are part of the BookingSuite series, including the rate shopper tool Rate Intelligence.
Here’s what you can do to find a suitable replacement for your RateIntelligence service.
What is RateIntelligence?
RateIntelligence/Rate Manager is a rate shopping tool operated by Booking.com and offering a free plan to small hotels and independent accommodation providers.
It has all the basic functionality one would expect from a rate shopper, pulling pricing data straight from the Booking.com database for your hotel and your competitors. The service is bundled with local demand information and it also features daily email alerts on price changes.
Booking.com have stated that the Rate Intelligence rate manager will be be discontinued on 30 November 2020. It will be discontinued together with all of the other BookingSuite products, including WebDirect, ChoicePro and BookingButton.
Existing users don’t need to do anything to cancel their Rate Intelligence service as it will be cancelled for all users on the 30 November automatically. Users can also choose to cancel their Rate Intelligence account early, once they have found a suitable hotel rate shopper as a replacement, by following these steps.
Finding a suitable rate shopper alternative to Booking.com
For users who still haven’t found a suitable replacement to the Booking.com rate shopper, the good news is that until 30 November 2020 all of the rate intelligence accounts will continue to be fully operational. Users can still make changes to their competitor set, add/delete room categories and they will also continue to send Excel activity reports via email until that date.
One of the drawbacks of Rate Intelligence is the limited scope of the data. The rate shopper only covers pricing information coming from Booking.com excluding other OTAs which have a significant market share, such as Expedia (and all of the Expedia sub-brands).
Hotel Price Reporter is a rate shopper addressing this problem. The service combines pricing information from multiple OTAs simultaneously and can track multiple properties. The service is offered without a long-term contract, and you can sign-up for a 15-day trial for $15 USD.
The Hotel Price Reporter rate shopper is offered with flexible pricing plans to suit both small and large hotels.