Choosing a channel manager or distribution partner can be complicated. There are many options, but there is one that doesn’t have your best interest at heart, Red Awning.
In this post, I will walk through how they steal your billboard effect, repeat guests, & potential website traffic.
Questions to Ask your Partners
Do they drive traffic to a direct to consumer site that competes with your website?
Do they brand your properties with their brand or mine?
Do they remarket to guests that booked through their platform?
Do they share the guest’s real email?
Do they share where the reservation came from?
Do they target your best performing & converting keywords/Adword campaigns?
All of this boils down to who owns the customer & who owns the billboard affect the property manager or the distribution partner.
Branding
Here is a Mammoth Mountain Reservation listing I found on Expedia. Unfortunately for the average consumer, this looks like a RedAwning listing & not a Mammoth Mountain listing.
Stealing Your Billboard Effect & Website Traffic
Stealing the branding of your property isn’t right, but let’s see how this could affect guests that try and search for your website on google.
If I take this property & search on Google the first non-organic search result besides Expedia/Hotels.com is RedAwning.com rather than the Property Manager’s own website.
The worst part is that the Property Manager’s website is nowhere to be found until page 4!
What Happens with YOUR Branding?
If the branding was changed to be by Mammoth Mountain branding rather than RedAwning a search for the same property would go from page 4 to the first organic result on Google!
What would you rather your branding or RedAwning’s branding?
How Else Do they Take Your Guests?
Once guest books through any channel through RedAwning they will not share the source channel or the real email or phone number. They will also send your guests a RedAwning branded email & phone number rather than your branding.
Targeting Your Best Keywords
If you are using a Blizzard website Redawning can now see your Google Analytics & target guests that have not even booked yet & target your best converting keywords & AdWords campaigns.
Imagine your best performing AdWords campaign disappearing overnight because your supposed “partner” is bidding up the PPC auction or guests that visit your site get retargeted with RedAwning display ads rather than your own.
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