Amazon rumored to be preparing travel site that offers hotel bookings
Are you ready to spend even more money at Amazon? According to Skift, Amazon is preparing its own travel service, focused on independent hotels and resorts near major US cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Seattle. The travel news site discovered that two independent hotels have already signed up to the service and one that was strongly considering doing so. Amazon would reportedly house a curated range of hotels within a few hours' drive from those aforementioned cities.
Room availability, types and pricing and photos would all be folded into an Amazon listing and hotels will apparently pay a standard 15 percent commission to Amazon on bookings. One hotel representative told Skift that Amazon was using TripAdvisor ratings to choose places and will apparently only have a handful of options per destination --the aim is to offer Amazon's clout to independent and boutique hotels that don't have the advertising budget of chains. Amazon Travel, as the hub would apparently be called, would also include editorial content and features covering the place. We've reached out to Amazon for comment, but according to the report the retailer's travel focus would be hotels, although given how much the company likes to dabble, we bet the very idea is enough to have rival travel sites sweating.
