Abstract

The market for hotel room accommodation is highly fragmented on the supply-side as well as on the demand-side. Online booking platforms such as booking.com or hotel.de bring together hotels and their customers. Hotels and booking customers are the main customer groups of the platform. This paper explores the business model of a large online hotel booking platform, hotel.de, using a case study approach. By serving two customer groups simultaneously, hotel.de has to deal with the specific dynamics that unfold on the two sides of its platform and align its business model accordingly. The results reveal that hotel.de maintains two distinct business models for the two customer groups, offering a unique set of value propositions to each of them. A third, overarching business model links the two sides by simultaneously solving both sides’ specific problems and creating a match between booking customers and hotels.

Download

Share

COinS
 

Two-sided Cybermediary Platforms: The Case of Hotel.de

The market for hotel room accommodation is highly fragmented on the supply-side as well as on the demand-side. Online booking platforms such as booking.com or hotel.de bring together hotels and their customers. Hotels and booking customers are the main customer groups of the platform. This paper explores the business model of a large online hotel booking platform, hotel.de, using a case study approach. By serving two customer groups simultaneously, hotel.de has to deal with the specific dynamics that unfold on the two sides of its platform and align its business model accordingly. The results reveal that hotel.de maintains two distinct business models for the two customer groups, offering a unique set of value propositions to each of them. A third, overarching business model links the two sides by simultaneously solving both sides’ specific problems and creating a match between booking customers and hotels.