Hotel Chain Gets ToughHotel Chain Gets Tough

InterContinental Hotels Group issued new mandates last week that place quality controls on third-party travel sites that sell its hotel rooms. The 3,500-hotel chain, which includes the Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn brands, says that beginning May 20, it won't do business with third-party sites that display inconsistent pricing to consumers, provide inaccurate information on room inventories, and use E-mail and fax to notify hotels of bookings. While these practices have created problems throughout the hotel industry, several third-party sites already have developed Internet-based links to hotels that solve some of these problems and are working on more sophisticated two-way communication links (see "The Right Balance," April 12, 2004).

Third-party sites that lag in these efforts are likely to face contention industrywide. InterContinental says pricing and inventory discrepancies lead to customer dissatisfaction. Says Jan Freitag, a hotel analyst with Smith Travel Research: "There's a lot of grumbling from the chains that the consumers aren't getting what they're looking for."