In Reply to: Foot in mouth..... posted by dinginbintangbagus on Saturday, 7. July 2007 at 08:04 Bali Time:
In recent years poor old Bali has taken many knocks and numbers there of course have reflected this.
Many hotels in desperation have been doing deals direct with clients as they just want business so badly. Many of the smaller hotels are not contracted by wholesalers so this is their standard practice any way.
With the ones who do contract with whoelsalers the understanding is that they give you a retail/rack price thus encouraging you to go through a TA and there wholesalers. Why is this??? Because if they don't have industry partners they are too invisble globally speaking. If they go into those nice glossy brochures and do stay pay deals/bonus nights and involve themselves with promotional activities then they get much needed exposure. They then have a bisquillion agents out there sprooking for them because they can in fact sell you in at a good rate. It is short sighted of the hotels with their current return to high occupancy to back door their Industry partners as it does come back to bite them. You'll see ahuge trun around with this as they continue to see that confidence in Bali is high again. I'm already seeing and hearing it daily.
Once they deviate from this and deal direct with clients they risk losing the support of these industry partners thus losing a greater opportunity for more business. More and more they are going back to Rack and your pricing will look better through the TA's. Keep in mind that you are buying one or two rooms for a brief period and the wholesalers are buying huge allotments and promisisng to fill those rooms and nights.
Before I was doing my current job I assumed that going direct would cut out all those middle people and therefore save money. Not so... It's the massive buying power that gets the deals. This also applies to air fares. I often see people on here talk about the great deal they got doing this and that and often it's a solo travelller staying as budget as possible. When you bare in mind the tiny profit margin on this type of traveller then there is just no real room to discount it down. When you consider a family doing a moderate to high end hotel and staying for weeks then TA's can really make a huge difference.
What ever you do - Just go. Bali is better than ever adn I can't wait to get back.
cheers
Nicno