During the panel I ran at the China Travel Distribution Summit in Guangzhou, I asked a final question of my panelists, 'What's the one trend they'll be watching in the next 12 months?'

Most cited was China outbound and regionalization of online travel; however the answer was Stan van Roij, managing director of INFOR EasyRMS was 'Price differentiation.'

So what exactly does he mean by that, I asked him.

Here's his take:

"The hotel industry has adopted a price parity policy that basically states that all channels would be distributing the same price for the room, so be it on brand.com or Agoda, or booking.com, or via GDS, or via the phone, the price is, say USD100.

"This was done to overcome the non-parity issue that was in place, where the OTAs had actually lower rates than on the direct hotel channels (own website, phone, etc).

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