Rate parity

Rate parity is used in the hospitality industry to define the practice of maintaining consistent prices across all distribution channels such as OTAs, wholesalers, GDSs, metasearch engines, and the hotel’s own website.

It means that hotels can’t offer discounts or special deals on their own websites or on some selected channels. As a result, it becomes more difficult to attract direct bookings, so hotels have to pay commissions to OTAs and other distributors. To drive direct reservations, some hotels try to implement different strategies like offering free or discounted ancillary services (e.g., Wi-Fi, breakfast, etc.).

Channel managers are software tools that help hotels synchronize and manage their rates throughout the sales channels automatically.