So the first big news of 2012 for the hospitality industry turned out to be the launch last week of Room Key, a joint venture by six of the industry’s largest companies to create a simple and easy to use original hotel search engine.

 

Roomkey.com, the eponymous site, basically works like this. Consumers go onto the site and search for properties by city and date. They then have the option to narrow the search by sorting results by distance, highest price, hotel name, or star rating, with the results then displayed in one of three formats – map, grid or listing. Once they have selected a property, the consumer clicks onto the property image and can view details of rates as well as more property shots. Bookings are made directly on the property or company’s own site via a link on the search engine.

 

At first glance, the site certainly seems to live up to its promise of making hotel searches ‘simple, fast and fun’. The launch of Roomkey.com is also firmly backed by the hospitality industry with heavyweights such as Marriott International and IHG already on board, and Best Western since signed up, but its launch does throw up an array of questions. What is the commission structure? How long will it take before enough commercial partners are enlisted to make it a viable player? And in what is an already overcrowded market, is another hotel search engine really necessary?

 

Room Key’s CEO John F. Davis defends the decision to develop a new hotel search engine saying that it was based on the fact that ‘no one understands better [the decision process of finding the right hotel] than hoteliers’.

 

But what do the experts think? Hotel consultant Daniel Edward Craig says he liked the simplicity of the site and believes that its launch is timely. “It was high time for a site like Roomkey.com and I think it's a promising start. The site needs fine-tuning and expansion of information and properties, but that will come in time,” he said.

 

He cautions, however, that despite the backing of the industry, success of the site isn’t guaranteed. “Whether it can compete with online travel agencies and Google Hotel Finder remains to be seen. OTAs have gotten huge in part by charging high commissions and using this revenue to spend massively on advertising. If Room Key charges lower commissions, it may not have the advertising budget required to compete. Throughthis advertising OTAs have convinced travellers they offer the best rates, and they often do thanks to mismanagement of these relationships by hotels. The site won't be able to offer better rates due to rate parity agreements, so it will have to work hard to gain traveller attention and trust. It will also need to integrate guest reviews and find a way to reach critical mass. So I think the site shows potential but has a long way to go before it stands to gain significant market share from the OTAs,” he states.