ABSENCE OF RATE PARITY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES IN HOTEL INDUSTRY

Abstract

Rate parity is one of the most important questions of hotel industry in different countries. It is described as a strategy which offers same rate with same conditions for a certain room category in all sales channels at the same time. In this study, positive and negative characteristics of rate parity will be explored. Before this process, marketing instruments and general characteristics of marketing will be underlined. Especially, price policy has an important position in marketing mix. Price strategies such as high price strategy, low price strategy and market price strategies will be examined where price differentiation has a crucial role. Price policy targets are consisted of financial, volume and customer objectives and rate parity can be found within the rate stability under customer objectives. Shortly, rate stability consists of sum of rate unity, rate transparency and rate parity. Here, the absence of rate parity is questioned and described which is the main discussion topics of hotel industry with qualitative methods. As a result, pros and cons of rate parity will be put in order with the findings of this study and recommendations will be made for the hotel sector. Rate parity will be more understandable for young researchers in order to increase their interest about this special topic.