The Top 6 Features To Look For In A Hotel Rate Shopper
With so many hotel technology products on the market today, it could be a daunting task for the unsuspecting buyer to choose the best one.
Luckily, not all products are made equal and the same goes for rate shopper software.
In this article, we’ll go through the most important features you need to look out for when choosing your hotel rate shopper.
But first, we’ll introduce the basic definition of "what is a hotel rate shopper?":
“A hotel rate shopper is an on-line tool used by industry professionals to collect, analyse and monitor hotel room rates across the Internet.”
They can come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Here are the most important ones to watch out for:
1. Data quality
The data quality forms the baseline when assessing your rate shopper. There are two important evaluation metrics here:
- Update frequency, and
- Data accuracy
Our rate shopper dynamically adjusts the update frequency depending on how often your monitored targets update their own rates.
Hotels that change their rates frequently are crawled more frequently. On the other hand, hotels that change their rates less frequently, get less frequent updates.
Our system also has a set of circuit breakers that alert our staff whenever things seem out of the ordinary. This ensures that the rates you read are as close to the real live rates as possible, without the high price.
2. OTA coverage
It is important to consider which OTAs would your rate shopper cover. Our rate shopper covers all major OTAs and OTA resellers with the Reporter plan. Our staff is also available to provide a bespoke solution for any special requirements you may have.
3. Ability to compare rates between different properties
It is impossible to compare rates between two properties without taking into account their room configuration. Our rate shopper let’s you compare the right type of rooms between the different properties by allowing you to define your own baskets of rooms. The filters you can pivot with can be:
- room name
- room size
- room position
- length of stay
- number of guests
- meal plan
4. Access to historical data
A dimensional rotation of the collected data can help you in evaluating the overall market conditions as well as how price-aggressive your competitors are. Our rate shopper software stores indefinite historical data for your competitor set with a range of filtering options.
5. Customer support
Your rate shopper provider should be able to provide help with on-boarding and whenever things go wrong. Hotel Price Reporter has live chat support, and most of our support enquiries are addressed within minutes via e-mail or telephone.
6. Service level agreement
In these uncertain times for the hospitality industry, the last thing you need is a long-term commitment to another software product. Look for a rate shopper that doesn’t require a long-term contract, on-boarding or setup fees.
Our rate shopper is offered on a no-commitment basis without any long-term contracts. You can subscribe today, and cancel anytime. No questions asked.