Here are 3 reasons OTAs don’t want you to have your guest data:
- Protecting their revenue: OTAs earn commissions on bookings. If guests contact you directly, they may bypass the OTA next time.
- Control over communication: OTAs want to control the messaging to promote their offers and services, keeping your hotel from upselling or building a personal connection.
- Reducing hotel loyalty: By keeping guests “anonymous,” OTAs prevent hotels from turning first-time visitors into loyal returning guests.
When the Problem Becomes Real for operations
Imagine: it’s check-in time. A guest sends a last-minute request through Booking.com. Your staff doesn’t have time to read it, so the request becomes invisible. The guest arrives expecting everything to be taken care of…
Your team does everything they can to fulfill the request, but the initial problem still lingers. After the stay, the review will almost certainly mention it even if the guest’s frustration was never addressed in time, even though your staff worked hard to solve it.
The Common Workaround That Fails
Many hotels try to message guests through the OTA platform. On paper, this seems like a solution but it comes with major downsides:
- Staff must constantly check multiple OTA platforms for replies.
- Every guest request or question has to be tracked manually.
- Communication is slow, fragmented, and prone to errors.
In other words, it’s time-consuming, inefficient, and still leaves you without the guest’s real contact information.
The Smarter Way: AeroGuest
With AeroGuest, guests still receive their communication through the OTA channel for example, the online check-in link. It’s clear, simple, and easy to use.
When the guest completes the online check-in, their real contact information is captured in your PMS, not the strange encrypted email provided by the OTA.
From that moment, you can start communicating directly with your guests. This allows you to send all relevant information before arrival (pre-arrival details, upselling, check-in instructions), during the stay (services, upgrades, hotel information), and even after departure.
This means you bypass all three reasons OTAs try to hide guest data. Even better, you can request marketing permission during check-in, turning the OTA guest into your direct guest. After their stay, you can send newsletters, special offers, or updates building loyalty and creating a long-term relationship that was impossible before.
In short: guests move from the OTA to your hotel: easy to reach, easy to communicate with, and fully part of your PMS ecosystem. You can get communication, and stronger relationships, all without fighting with OTA limitations.
