Skift Take
We web scraped 5,000 hotels across Google to understand the current state of the wider distribution landscape. We found that Google's actions are allowing small OTAs, new entrants and direct sites to compete head-on with the legacy players. Could this mean the end of the duopolistic power long-held by Booking and Expedia?
Our latest Skift Research report delves into the Google Hotels platform through extensive data scraping, using AI-powered Browse.ai and customized Python scripts to amass data from over 5,000 hotel listings in the U.S.
The primary objective was to understand the display mechanisms for hotels on Google, the involvement of online travel agencies, and evaluate whether Google is enabling direct bookings to compete with intermediaries such as Booking and Expedia.
This analysis was driven by Google's ascent in the booking funnel in re