O2o2o : the Channel Collaboration and Competition in Hotel Industry

With the development of e-commerce, O2O (online to offline) mode has been widely applied to a variety ofdaily life service industries. In traveling industries, hotels attract customers to experience hotel servicesoffline via multiple online channels: Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and hotel websites. Since OTAs chargea hefty commission, hotels hope their returning customers to book future visits from hotel websites instead ofOTA websites. The two channels can cooperate to attract new customers for hotels but compete with eachother for returning customers. In addition, attracting new customers online, servicing customers offline, andalluring returning customers online can be described as the operation flow of O2O2O (online to offline toonline) mode. However, previous studies mainly focused on the multichannel integration of the samebusiness entities in the first half of the operation flow. The study is to investigate channel cooperation andcompetition between different business entities (OTAs and hotels) in the operation flow of O2O2O mode.The results show that website service quality of OTAs can attract both new and returning customers.Confirmation of hotel offline services affects customers’ intention to visit hotels. Perceived value of hotelbooking services can also attract returning customers. OTA and hotel websites indeed compete with eachother for customers’ future visits. The implications of these findings for hotel managers are discussed.