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EXCLUSIVE: Nustay under attack from irate operators and Expedia

A Danish online booking site slated by Australian accom operators over its pricing tactics has been ostracised by Expedia.

Andrew Fitzpatrick, a market manager for Expedia Group, confirmed this week that the US giant has cut all ties with the Nustay bookings site.

“Nustay uses over 70 suppliers, including obtaining rates and availability from Expedia Partner Solutions (EPS),” he said.

“We can confirm we have received a number of complaints from hotels regarding Nustay pricing strategies and in accordance with our processes, we have terminated our relationship with Nustay and taken action to ensure EPS rates and availability are not redistributed to Nustay.”

AccomNews was alerted to the company by readers complaining about Nustay offering reduced rates on rooms which were then affecting their price quality scores with the two major OTAs, in turn causing the property’s rooms to be selected for offers such as early payment discounts on those major sites.

“The end result of the OTA games/wars is that we are needing to lower our direct booking prices to remain competitive and secure our own bookings,” said one operator.

Another said: “They are underselling our rates on Booking.com and Expedia and as such destroying our quality scores.

“I have been in contact them and they refuse to say where they get their pricing from and refuse to remove my listing… Everyone is listed with them and probably don’t even know they are listed.”

According to the company’s website, Nustay is an online hotel booking platform, with “a disruptive new hybrid concept not seen before”. It boasts an extensive inventory of more than 1.5 million hotels worldwide “at the best prices on the market”.

One industry insider told AccomNews: “The site is run via an AI type of interface, using big-data/blockchain information to scour the internet and find the cheapest prices.”

Accom operators, meanwhile, are only finding out about their properties being listed with Nustay after their ratings with the big OTAs are affected by the pricing.  

One threatened to go to their local MP after Nustay continually refused to take down their property listing, eventually winning the battle to be removed from the site.

The operator said:  They finally told me they got their prices from Expedia. I know they also get them from Booking.com then those companies penalise us for the Nustay pricing.

“Nobody knows they are listed with them. I just stumbled across them when trying to improve my quality score.”

Booking.com has yet to respond to questions about Nustay but has told AccomNews it is looking to make comment early next week.

Chris Fozard, operations manager of the Budget Motels Group said he had been contacted by some members about Nustay and had advised them to email the company demanding that they be taken off the site.

“What I can suggest to your readers is to regularly check for ‘rate leakage’, so they can discover exactly where their property is being advertised and for how much,” he said.

“With this information they can either close down these leaks (by contacting the big two and telling them not to share their own property’s availability with the big two’s affiliate OTAs), or use them to their advantage, directing the guests to their own property website by offering higher pricing (where available) on the OTAs. 

“Property owners can use offers, vouchers and specials to their advantage if they have a read of the rules around rate parity.”

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Brenda Webster
4 years ago

Thank you for Nustay Article. We too were in a conflict with them and We did manage to get them to unlist our business once we made our demands clear.
Problem now is Hotels.com doing the same. I have contacted Expedia and demanded that they unlist us from this affiliate site of theirs, in saying this they themselves Expedia were offering discounted rates for our business using a 6 night stay. We do not offer these discounted rates to them. I am still waiting to here back about that and Hotels.com. We have had our Quality score now being affected by Booking.com, whom last week had all of our rates discounted with “Early Booker Rate” offering ridiculous prices for our rooms. No hope in hell of getting people to book direct, just makes us the business owners looks stupid in our own business. We have basically lost all control of our own business.

Brad John
Brad John
Reply to  Brenda Webster
4 years ago

Agree Brenda. We are going through the same issues.An affiliate cuts and reduces the prices,then they are price matched.Its now getting really bad.I have cut off /terminated some of the sites.These sites are now advertising our property without approval and re-directing to another site.

A
A
Reply to  Brenda Webster
4 years ago

Dear Brenda,

could you share how did you managed to get rid of Nustay?

Thank you

Ross
Ross
4 years ago

Agoda are another big discounter of rates. We have had no end of trouble with them offering up to 10% discount on our rates. We even tried increasing our rates to Agoda, but that was ignored and they take our Expedia rates and discount them by 10%.

This effectively gives Agoda only 5% commission on any bookings, and affects our listing score on Expedia and Booking.com.

We tried to contact Agoda and get them to fix the rates, but they ignored us. The only way to get Agoda to fix this issue was to email them and ask them to cancel our listing. This got an immediate response, and they fixed the rates. But only for the next 6 months. We had to “cancel” our listing a second time to get them to fix our rates permanently.

Brenda Webster
Reply to  Ross
4 years ago

Hi Ross,

We had the same issue with Agoda and we got rid of them a while ago now. They are tied in with Booking.com. Its just a never ending battle to retain the actual rights to run our own business’s as we see fit. It’s a damn joke why do we even set our rates in our channel manager, when the OTA’s just come along and put their own price willy nilly, so freaking mad with them.
They are just pure greed machines. They already get 15% or 12% of very booking they have from us and you etc, no but they want more and more, and we end being the meat in the battle sandwich between Expedia and Booking.com with the Quality scores and darkening. We will not be continuing in this business much longer, hopeless trying to fight them. ACCC where are you.

Lynne Baucher
Reply to  Ross
4 years ago

Thankyou for your great article alerting everyone to the huge problems we are having with these OTAs I had the same problem with Agoda. Discounting then having my quality score destroyed with booking.com and Expedia.You dont know unless you are following your properties price as if you were a customer as the net amount you receive is as per normal. I contacted them and demanded my site on Agoda be removed They did oblige and it was down in 2 hours. After about a month I reappeared on Agoda but now is only linked to booking.com pricing. I was not notified I would be relisted with Agoda and had guests telling me they had booked with Agoda and my confirmation came through as booking.com. Have just done battle with Nustay and after many emails they finally agreed to remove my listing. I guess many people do not know they are listed with Nustay and are offering ridiculous pricing for the area.

Lynne Baucher
Reply to  Lynne Baucher
4 years ago

Exactly Brenda. Where are the ACCC. Surely they should be looking at how theses big companies are destroying small business. I dont know why we bother putting up prices via our channel managers when they can just be altered at their whim. We might be small business but collectively we must be of some importance to these overseas based multi nationals. Come on our new government .You say you are for small business. Act now.

Kate Jackson
4 years ago

From Michael Lee, Managing Director of The Brighton Savoy

Thank you for your article in Accomnews in relation to Nustay. We are also being impacted negatively in relation to their actions.

On the 25th May 2019 I contacted Nustay to be removed from there site due to similar parity Issues. Outlined in your article.

I received a response below:

“Nustay.com works with around 100 of the top bed banks, OTA’s and DMC’s around the world, securing real-time dynamic rates and availability from multiple different sources. The distribution agreements you have in place with your direct partners, allow them to sell on the rates to their own partners. In this case, Nustay.com

By contract provisions, each partner guarantees us they have full legal rights to distribute these rates to us. I can completely understand your position on such a sensitive matter. And even though there is no fault on rate undercutting from our side, I will make sure our marketing team will investigate your property. “

I then requested which booking sites they are obtaining our rates to receive the response
“As it was mentioned before Nustay.com works with around 100 of the top bed banks, OTA’s and DMC’s around the world. Unfortunately, I am not able to disclose the names of our suppliers as per confidential provisions of our partnership agreements with them. I hope you understand.”

Not only are they discounting scraped rates they will not reveal their source.

Charles de Farcy
Charles de Farcy
Reply to  Kate Jackson
4 years ago

Thank you for the article Kate.
I see that many hotels have been affected by these disparity issues as I have been for some properties in Paris.
We actually made a reservation on Nustay to find out that the source of their booking was JumboTours. It appears that some wholesalers sell the discounted rates they contract for as room only to this website.

Warren
Warren
4 years ago

So the 15% rate paid (ripped) to OTA’s is excessive to the extent it allows this commission sharing to exist in the first place. It’s that simple.

The two giants use their brands and the fat we provide them to commission share one way or another.

Cyndi
Cyndi
4 years ago

I am astounded as to how uneducated the Australian people are when it comes to these thieves. We have locals still making reservations with OTA’s. Why? There needs to be a television campaign informing the Australian people that they are not supporting local business they are not supporting the Australian economy by using these OTA’s. We only list with one OTA and that is enough. Had no end of trouble with Agoda and Expedia that we got rid of them.

Maurice
Maurice
Reply to  Cyndi
4 years ago

I agree Cyndi. I also got rid of Agoda and Expedia and have just stayed with the Dutch company. I still charge more for bookings through them and people seemed shocked when I tell them they would have saved money by booking directly. I think it’s the blanket advertising by these behemoths.

Bert
Bert
4 years ago

We’ve also contacted Nustay on numerous occasions to have our property removed from their site. Besides a myriad of tickets opened, nothing further! We have informed them and will not accept or honour any booking made through them.

As far as rate leakage is concerned, competition among OTA’s is fierce and they are all guilty of discounting rates without the establishment’s authority.

Beachfront Resort
4 years ago

For anyone else having trouble with this booking site
We have been successful in getting Nustay to agree to permanently remove our property listing from their site.
It took a few strongly worded emails, rebuffing some obviously formula responses from their ‘hotel relations team’ – the info@nustay email address.
I suspect the fact that we copied our objections to every high level management and investor email address we could find may have helped. These are ‘[email protected]’; ‘[email protected]’;
[email protected]’ this is Sedermera Fondkommission – financial advisor and issuing agency to Nustay in connection with the IPO
[email protected]’; this is Mathias Lundoe Nielsen CEO & Founder
[email protected]’ this is Helen Gornostai Our emails got escalated to her so presumably has some management role
and https://investor.nustay.com has a list of board and management personnel.
As we considered information on the Nustay site to be incorrect and misrepresent our property and mislead the booking public, we also threatened to complain to the government consumer protection authorities in both New Zealand and Denmark.
Good luck

Ben
4 years ago

We’ve also had no end of trouble with these sites. We’ve seen off Nustay, but had to disconnect Agoda as they were simply making rates up. CTrip (or Trip as they now are) are yet another site I’ve found offering outrageous rates and no response worthy of the name from their Market Manager. We switched them off as well.

Anja POSER
4 years ago

Dear Beachfront Resort,
could you forward to me your mail you have sent to Nustay, please?
Thanks a lot in advance!
Anja

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