Blog homeHotels.com have launched a new hotel search tool that they call “Hotel visualiser” (from VisualDNA)
It isn’t too bad a tool - although I am not that excited about it. The premise is that you choose images that reflect the kind of hotel you want - for example you have to click on one of these images:
The problem, in my mind, is that some of the choices reflect decisions that help with destination choice not hotel choice. At the end of the process you end up with a destination dropdown which is a bit dull.
If I knew where I wanted to go - I wouldn’t be going through the inspiration process…..!
Even after answering the image questions, the hotel matches are not that good. For example:
You can just make out that I have selected the worst restaurant (with plastic tables) and bunk beds (i.e. hostel style accommodation). I am also travelling alone. However, hotels.com still want me to stay in a £398 a night palace (USD 800) (which they say is a 100% match). I guess the £129 a night hotel is more appropriate for my selections.
Cookie tracking from TradeDoubler
Anyway, the tool has only recently been launched so perhaps they will tweak the design and hotel categorisation over time to make them more appropriate. What I am more interested in is how they have incorporated tracking into their website.
They are tracking using the TradeDoubler affiliate tracking system.
The reason this is interesting is that they are potentially overwriting all tracking from 3rd party affiliates to Hotels.com that also use the TradeDoubler system.
Take this example. Lets assume there is a 3rd party hotel site called “Musings hotels”
- Web visitor is on the Musings hotels site. They locate an accommodation and click through to the hotels.com site. This click is tracked by TradeDoubler affiliate system.
- The user, now on the Hotels.com (hotels.co.uk) site, decides to use the visualiser tool that is heavily promoted on the hotels.co.uk homepage (both in the top banner - and as a piece of major functionality in the right column)
- The user completes the VisualDNA analysis and selects a hotel. At this point they click through a TradeDoubler link (from the VisualDNA functionality). This sets a cookie so that any subsequent transaction is commissioned to VisualDNA rather than the original affiliate (Musings hotels)
So, looks like lots of 3rd party affiliates are getting their tracking cookie overwritten (so lots of commission not being paid out). That isn’t a very nice thing to do. Affiliate tracking functionality should only be used for tracking fresh traffic from offsite locations onto a main site - and never for insite tracking (and definitely never at the same time!)
Being a good boy, I have asked both TradeDoubler and Hotels.com for comment prior to writing this blog post. TradeDoubler (both UK office and the US press contact) declined to answer my email (I have given them 3 days) - but Hotels.com UK PR have stated:
“The Visualiser is a great new tool to help people find their perfect hotel and we are in the very early stages of utilising this application. We are constantly testing and refining a range of new customer initiatives and constantly review our tracking accordingly. Much of the traffic to the Visualiser is external to Hotels.com.”
So although they say that much of the tool’s traffic is originally external to Hotels.com they do admit that some of the traffic to the new tool is sourced from the Hotels.com site directly (i.e. overwriting affiliate cookies). I also told them what I was going to write about with respect to cookie tracking - so they could have put me right on the technical facts if they had chosen to do so - instead they have as good as admitted that I am right.
In other news, Compete have recently stated that 44% of all traffic going to the Hotels.com website is paid for traffic. Not sure if this includes affiliate marketing or not. Anyway, 44% is the largest out of the leading OTAs. (This incidentally is the answer to the chart I teased everyone with last week)
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