What are Metasearch Engines and why you should start using them

11 March 2023

Maddalena Mazzaferri

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Do you want to know what are metasearch engines in the hospitality industry and what they are used for? In this Octorate blog article we will try to explain it to you, showing you how metasearch engines can save you time in managing your properties and increase their online visibility and direct revenues. In addition, at the end of the article, we will briefly show you how to take advantage of the benefits of metasearch in hotels and vacation rentals thanks to the easiness of use of Octorate. Are you ready? Let’s go!

What are metasearch engines
What are Metasearch Engines used for
What are the best Metasearch Engines for Hotels & Vacation Rentals
How to manage Metasearch Engines on Octorate
FAQ

What are metasearch engines
What are Metasearch Engines used for
What are the best Metasearch Engines for Hotels & Vacation Rentals
How to manage Metasearch Engines on Octorate

What are metasearch engines in the world of Hospitality

If you want to know what are metasearch engines, just keep in mind that a Metasearch is a platform that uses data extracted from other search engines, in order to offer aggregated results, so as to provide the searcher with more comprehensive results by presenting the global offer of several query sources.

In our industry (that of Hospitality) we refer more specifically to travel metasearch engines, or those platforms that display results concerning hotels, vacation rentals, flights, car rentals and, more in general, everything that has to do with the hotel industry.

However, there are metasearch engines for all kinds of sectors, as for example to find job offers.

What are metasearch engines used for in hotels and vacation rentals?

Basically, metasearch engines allow, in the Hospitality industry, to save time for travelers, while they allow to increase the visibility of the host’s accommodation and hotel.

Therefore, in Hospitality, a metasearch engine brings up an accommodation within a selection of services according to the filters configured by the searcher, who can complete his or her booking without having to access to the main page of each platform.

However, it is important to bear in mind that the high levels of competition in this sector make it necessary to invest in advertising campaigns in order to appear well positioned in the results of metasearch engines.

A real-life use case

Now, imagine yourself sitting on your sofa. You have a great urge to go on holiday but you have no time to organize it.

For this reason, you will be comparing prices and offers on different sites. You will spend so much time that, after a few hours looking for alternatives and doing the maths, you will probably not want to go at all!

Before giving up, however, you can always use a metasearch engine that will perform your search on the main platforms and will offer you in a few seconds the best results based on the parameters you have entered (availability, calendar, prices, rooms, etc.).

Easy, isn’t it?

What are the best metasearch engines for hotels?

The most popular metasearch engines for Hotels and Vacation Rentals to save time and increase the visibility of your accommodation are:

We suggest you go directly to the site of the following metasearch engines to discover all their features and potential.

It is clear that you will also need to contact these partner platforms to activate an account with them and connect it to our All-in-One system.

Each of them has its own characteristics that can be useful to any accommodation and improve its profits through increased visibility that will lead to more direct bookings.

How to manage metasearch engines on Octorate

In order to start using metasearch engines for your Hotel or vacation rental on Octorate, you will need to include the Metasearch package in your subscription and, above all, activate and correctly install the Booking Engine, from which the Metasearch extracts the data to be shown to users (and without which, therefore, you cannot take advantage of the benefits of the metasearch).

In addition, as indicated in the previous paragraph, you will have to go to the platforms concerned to activate an account with them.

What metasearch engines will do is to show the web page together with the results of the main online booking portals.

There’s a fantastic news for you: thanks Octorate’s partnership with Google Hotel Ads, you can display your rates on Google for free thanks to a new feature called Free Booking Links. You can imagine that those results, as their nature is organic, will be displayed after the Google Ads one (you can obviously charge your credit on Octorate and manage on a single platform your Google Ads Adv too).

Therefore, the use of metasearch engines in hotels therefore has a double advantage.

For guests, it will be much more advantageous to book on a site reached by the index of a metasearch because the price will be certainly more convenient (because free of OTA commissions) and all this will also be an advantage for the hotel, because there will be more direct bookings without commission costs.

Frequently Asked Questions

🕸️ What are Metasearch Engines in Hospitality Industry?

A Metasearch Engine is a platform that uses data extracted from other search engines, to offer aggregated results, in order to give search users more comprehensive results by presenting the global offer of several query sources. In our industry (Hospitality) we refer more specifically to travel metasearch engines, or those platforms that display results on hotels, vacation rentals, flights, car rentals and, more generally, everything that has to do with the hotel industry.

⏰ What are metasearch engines used for in Hotels and Vacation Rentals?

Basically, metasearch engines allow, in the Hospitality industry, to save time for travelers, while they allow to increase the visibility of the host’s accommodation and hotel.

Therefore, in Hospitality, a metasearch engine brings up an accommodation within a selection of services according to the filters configured by the searcher, who can complete his or her booking without having to access to the main page of each platform.