The Future of Online Hotel Booking: What's Happening in the Market Today.

Interviewer:

Let's take a step back. The leading international player exited the Russian market abruptly and permanently, creating an unprecedented situation for the hotel booking industry, which had not yet fully recovered from the pandemic. The existing infrastructure went through a period of turbulent transformation, revealing new weaknesses, while users experienced the inconvenience of losing the familiar and straightforward booking process they had been used to. What happened next, and where does the market stand today?

Olga Dolgova, Managing Director of the HotelStar platform, Vipservice Holding:

It was certainly a remarkable period. Until 2022, the Russian online hotel booking market was dominated by a well-known international platform. According to various estimates, its share of the market reached 80–90%. Many of the services operating today were unable to compete with such a dominant player and eventually left the market, while for most accommodation providers it served as the primary channel for attracting and retaining guests.

If I were to answer your question briefly, I would put it this way: the Russian market did not shrink—it completely reinvented itself.

At that point, the industry found itself operating in a completely new reality. Many expected a severe crisis, but what actually happened was the rapid development of Russian companies and homegrown technologies.

Today, the market is far more diversified. Leading positions are now held by Russian platforms such as Yandex Travel, Ostrovok, Bronevik, as well as booking services offered by banks, tour operators, and other online travel platforms. At the same time, direct bookings through hotel websites have become much more important, alongside professional hospitality solutions such as Property Management Systems (PMS), Channel Managers, and online booking engines.

In my opinion, however, the most significant transformation has taken place not on the customer-facing side of the business, but within the underlying technology itself.

Interviewer:

Could you elaborate on that?

Olga Dolgova:

Certainly. In the past, many companies built their businesses around a single major international partner. Today, almost every company works with multiple suppliers at the same time. This reduces dependence on a single sales channel, encourages healthy competition, and makes businesses much more resilient.

As a result, B2B infrastructure is becoming increasingly important.

How does it work? Today, simply connecting hotels is no longer enough. Companies need to ensure reliable data exchange between dozens of suppliers, keep prices and room availability up to date, automatically match identical properties from different sources, and provide partners with a single technology interface. This is exactly the approach we follow at HotelStar.

Interviewer:

Were those the only major changes?

Olga Dolgova:

Not at all. Another major milestone was the emergence of a new international payment infrastructure.

Making international hotel inventory available on Russian platforms in rubles required building a sophisticated multi-layered architecture capable of adapting to constantly changing conditions. It meant developing new solutions, establishing new partnerships, and continuously finding ways to overcome new challenges.

In my opinion, this period also highlighted something that cannot be bought—reputation. Reputation is what allows your partners to extend substantial credit facilities because they trust your company and are prepared to increase those limits whenever necessary.

That is why, at HotelStar, we believe the next stage of market development will not be defined by competition between individual OTAs. Instead, it will be driven by the continuous improvement of the infrastructure that enables all market participants to launch new products faster and manage hotel content more efficiently.

Interviewer:

The market certainly seems more mature today. What is changing in online hotel booking?

Olga Dolgova:

Today, companies compete not through their websites, but through their infrastructure—APIs, data quality, and processing speed.

B2B infrastructure allows new market players to launch much faster. A bank no longer needs to build a hotel booking platform from scratch or spend years integrating with dozens of suppliers. A marketplace does not have to negotiate separately with every content provider. And an OTA no longer needs to maintain a large team just to support numerous independent integrations.

Instead, all of them can connect to an infrastructure partner and gain access to hotel inventory through a single technology layer.

Interviewer:

Why is B2B actually more important than it seems?

Olga Dolgova:

B2B often remains invisible in the TravelTech industry because end users only see the front end—a banking app, an OTA website, a marketplace, or another travel service.

Behind every user-friendly interface, however, there is a complex infrastructure that connects content suppliers, APIs, availability verification systems, booking and cancellation rules, pricing, customer support, and data reconciliation.

That is why B2B is, in fact, the foundation of the entire market.

When the infrastructure works well, users get exactly what they expect: fast search results, accurate prices, up-to-date photos, reliable descriptions, transparent booking conditions, and confirmed reservations without issues.

On the other hand, when the B2B infrastructure is weak, even the most attractive interface cannot compensate for it. Duplicate hotel listings, pricing errors, booking cancellations, confirmation issues, and other problems inevitably lead to a loss of customer trust.

This became especially apparent after major international players left the Russian market.

The industry needed not only new booking platforms, but also its own technology ecosystem: suppliers, aggregators, APIs, property matching systems, automation tools, and data quality management solutions.

HotelStar has developed exactly this type of infrastructure, and today we provide it to a large number of our partners.

Interviewer:

Speaking of technology, what role does artificial intelligence play in this environment?

Olga Dolgova:

When a user clicks the search button, the system queries multiple suppliers, combines the results, validates rates, and removes duplicate listings—all within seconds.

This is where artificial intelligence delivers real value by automating complex data-processing tasks.

Today's online hotel booking market handles enormous volumes of information every day. The same hotel may appear in several supplier databases, while differing in its description, photographs, property name, room categories, or even address.

In the past, specialists had to reconcile all this information manually. Today, much of this work can be entrusted to intelligent algorithms.

Interviewer:

So AI can automatically match hotel information from different sources, identify inconsistencies and errors, and improve the overall quality of the data?

Olga Dolgova:

Exactly.

AI is also becoming an increasingly valuable tool for demand forecasting, dynamic pricing, personalized recommendations, and intelligent search.

I believe that within the next few years, artificial intelligence will no longer be just another product feature. Instead, it will become a fundamental part of virtually every travel platform.

At the same time, it is important to understand that AI is not replacing industry professionals. Rather, it frees them from routine tasks, allowing them to focus on decision-making, product development, and creating new services.

Interviewer:

Why has data quality become one of the industry's key competitive advantages today?

Olga Dolgova:

If the main question used to be how many hotels a platform offered, today the quality of the information has become just as important.

Users expect to see accurate prices, genuine photos, reliable room descriptions, precise hotel locations, and clear booking conditions. Even a small error can result in a loss of trust.

Most users have no idea what technology powers a booking platform, but they notice mistakes immediately. On the other hand, when search results are fast, prices are accurate, and bookings are completed without any issues, users naturally develop confidence in the platform.

Ultimately, trust becomes the most valuable asset any online booking service can have.

That is why B2B is more important than it may seem. Although it remains largely invisible to end users, it determines how quickly the market develops, how many new products appear, and how reliably online booking services operate.

In the end, success belongs not to the company that simply offers the largest number of hotels, but to the one that manages data, integrations, and the entire booking process—from search to confirmation—with the highest level of quality. I believe this will be one of the key competitive advantages in the future.

We do not see HotelStar as just another accommodation booking platform. There are already many services focused on end users. Our mission is different: we help those services develop their hotel products faster, more efficiently, and at a lower cost.

HotelStar is, first and foremost, an infrastructure technology platform. We aggregate hotel inventory from multiple suppliers into a unified format and provide our partners with access through a single API.

This enables companies to avoid dozens of separate integrations and significantly reduce the time required to launch new services.

As a result, HotelStar's partners can focus on developing their own products and improving the customer experience instead of spending months building infrastructure from scratch.

I believe that platforms like ours will drive the industry's development over the coming years because modern TravelTech is no longer built around individual websites—it is built around high-quality technology infrastructure.

Interviewer:

Finally, let's look ahead. What do you think the future of the industry will look like?

Olga Dolgova:

I believe the market will become much more automated, intelligent, and almost invisible to the end user.

In my view, the industry will continue to evolve in several key directions.

First, automation will expand across virtually every process—from data processing to customer support.

Second, artificial intelligence will become a standard tool for search, personalization, demand forecasting, and data quality management.

Third, infrastructure providers will play an increasingly important role. More banks, marketplaces, digital ecosystems, and technology companies will offer travel services to their customers, but very few of them will build hotel booking platforms entirely on their own. Using an established technology infrastructure will be a far more efficient approach.

That is why I believe the future belongs to companies that can integrate data, provide reliable connectivity, and establish common technology standards for the industry.

At HotelStar, we are committed to the high service standards expected in the corporate travel industry. All of our clients' data is stored securely on their own corporate servers.

Ultimately, the entire industry will benefit. Travelers will enjoy more convenient services, hotels will gain access to more high-quality distribution channels, and technology companies will be able to launch new products and scale their solutions much faster.

This, in my opinion, is the next stage in the evolution of both the Russian and the global TravelTech industry.