BY JAMES WILKINSON
Wotif.com is set to increase its commission take from hotels in Australia by 2% over the next two years, eventually lifting the rate to 12% by January 1, 2014.
Outgoing Wotif Group CEO Robbie Cooke made the announcement on Monday (Oct 22) at the company’s AGM, saying the move was necessary to fight off strong competition in the marketplace.
“We operate in a truly global marketplace today, where the much higher commission levels of some of our competitors allow them to market themselves more aggressively,” Cooke said in a statement to hotel partners. “With this in mind, we are taking a number of steps to ensure that we have the financial firepower to ensure that we can deliver more for our accommodation partners over the coming years.
“One of these steps is making the very difficult decision to increase our low 10% commission model by one percentage point with effect from 1st January 2013. This will be followed by one further lift of the same amount on 1st January 2014.
“This will still see Wotif.com remain as one of the world’s lowest cost online travel agencies but it will also allow us to increase the reinvestment in our business to drive sales performance for you.
“We have not made this decision lightly and we understand that this will also have an impact on your business. I want to take this opportunity to reassure you that we will be reinvesting this extra commission into activities that will allow us to drive an even better sales outcome,” he said.
Cooke said Wotif.com was the website was currently attracting 5 million customers per month.