What does price parity mean?
That the guest finds the same room at the same price on Booking.com, on Expedia and on your website. The agencies demanded it by contract so that their customer had no incentive to buy somewhere else after having found you there.
Wide parity and narrow parity
- Wide: the hotel cannot sell cheaper on any channel, not even on its own website. This is the one European legislation has been narrowing down.
- Narrow: the hotel cannot sell cheaper on other agencies, but it can on its own website or offline.
It is worth reading the actual contract for each channel, because conditions change by country and by programme, and what holds in one does not hold in another.
How to compete without breaking it
Parity refers to the published price of the same room under the same conditions. There is room to move around that:
- Added value: breakfast, late check-out or parking included in the direct booking.
- Closed rates: prices visible only after signing in, or inside a loyalty club.
- Packages and experiences: a different product is not the same room, so there is nothing to compare.
Why it is worth watching
If an OTA publishes your room cheaper than your own website, your booking engine stops making sense to the guest and you lose the most profitable booking you had. Checking parity on your connected channels every so often is part of the distribution job.