The Future of Online Booking: What Is Happening in the Market Today.

Interviewer:

Let's look back for a moment. A major international player left the Russian market abruptly and permanently, creating a real precedent in the booking industry, which had not yet fully recovered from the pandemic. The existing infrastructure was struggling to adapt, revealing new weaknesses, while users faced the discomfort of losing a familiar and straightforward booking journey. What happened next, and where are we today?

Olga Dolgova, Managing Director of HotelStar, the Vipservice holding:

Yes, it was an interesting period. Until 2022, the Russian market was dominated by a well-known international platform. According to various estimates, its share of the Russian online booking market reached 80–90%. Many services operating today were unable to compete with the monopolist and discontinued their projects, while for most accommodation providers, it was the main channel for attracting and retaining guests.

To answer your question briefly, I would put it this way: the Russian market did not shrink — it was completely rebuilt.

The market found itself in a new reality. Many expected a serious crisis, but something else happened: Russian players and proprietary technologies began to develop rapidly.

Today, the market is much more diversified. Domestic platforms hold the leading positions — Yandex Travel, Ostrovok, Bronevik, services offered by banks and tour operators, as well as other online platforms. At the same time, direct sales through hotel websites and professional hotel technology solutions such as PMS, Channel Managers and online booking systems have grown significantly in importance.

But in my view, the biggest change happened not at the “storefront” level, but at the technology level.

Interviewer:

Could you elaborate on that?

Olga Dolgova:

Of course. In the past, many companies built their businesses around a single major international partner. Today, almost everyone seeks to work with several suppliers at once. This reduces dependence on a single sales channel, creates healthy competition and makes businesses much more resilient.

That is why B2B infrastructure is becoming increasingly important.

How does it work? Today, it is not enough simply to connect hotels. You need to ensure a stable exchange of data between dozens of suppliers, keep prices and room availability up to date, automatically match the same properties from different sources and provide partners with a unified technological interface. This is exactly the approach we follow at HotelStar.

Interviewer:

Are these all the changes?

Olga Dolgova:

No. Another significant qualitative shift was the emergence of a new international payment infrastructure. In order to make international hotel inventory available on domestic platforms in rubles, it was necessary to create a multilayered architecture and maintain it amid constant changes, develop new solutions and negotiate with partners. In my view, this is when something that cannot be bought came to the forefront — reputation. It is when someone gives you a substantial credit line because they trust you, and increases it online when the need arises.

That is why at HotelStar we believe that the next stage of market development is not a competition between individual OTAs, but the improvement of infrastructure that will allow all market participants to launch new products faster and work with hotel content more efficiently.

Interviewer:

Yes, the market does seem more mature this way. What is changing in online booking?

Olga Dolgova:

Today, it is no longer websites that compete, but infrastructure itself: APIs, data quality and processing speed.

B2B allows new players to enter the market quickly. A bank does not need to build a hotel platform from scratch and spend years integrating with dozens of suppliers. A marketplace does not need to negotiate independently with every platform. An OTA does not have to maintain a huge team solely to support fragmented integrations. All of them can connect to an infrastructure partner and gain access to hotel content through a single technological layer.

Interviewer:

Why is B2B actually more important than it may seem?

Olga Dolgova:

B2B often remains invisible in the TravelTech market because the end user sees only the “storefront”: a banking app, an OTA website, a marketplace section or a travel service. But behind a polished interface there is almost always complex infrastructure — interactions between content suppliers, APIs, availability-checking systems, booking and cancellation rules, rates, support and data reconciliation.

That is why B2B is essentially the foundation of the market. When it works well, users get what they expect: fast search, up-to-date prices and photos, accurate descriptions, clear cancellation terms and booking confirmation without errors. Conversely, if the B2B infrastructure is weak, even the most attractive interface cannot save the product: duplicate hotels, rate errors, cancellations and booking confirmation issues appear, ultimately resulting in a loss of trust.

After the departure of major international players, this became particularly apparent. The Russian market needed not only new storefronts, but also its own technological foundation: suppliers, aggregators, APIs, property-matching systems, automation tools and data quality controls. HotelStar has all of these capabilities, and we provide this inventory to a large number of our partners.

Interviewer:

If we go deeper into the technology side, what can you say about artificial intelligence in this context?

Olga Dolgova:

A user clicks the hotel search button, and within seconds the system sends requests to several suppliers, combines the results, checks rates and removes duplicates. The practical value of AI here lies in automating complex data-processing processes.

The modern online booking market works with enormous volumes of information every day. The same hotel may be listed by several suppliers simultaneously, while its description, photos, name, room category classification or address may differ. In the past, specialists handled this work painstakingly. Now it can be delegated to algorithms.

Interviewer:

As I understand it, AI can automatically match information about accommodation properties from different sources, identify discrepancies and simple errors, thereby improving the quality of the data displayed.

Olga Dolgova:

Exactly. It is also gradually becoming a tool for demand forecasting, dynamic pricing, personalized recommendations and intelligent search.

I am confident that in the coming years, artificial intelligence will become not a separate product feature, but a fundamental part of virtually every travel platform. At the same time, it is important to understand that AI does not replace industry experts. It frees them from routine tasks and allows them to focus on decision-making, product development and creating new services.

Interviewer:

Why is data quality becoming one of the key competitive advantages today?

Olga Dolgova:

If the main question in the past was how many hotels were available in the system, today the quality of information about them is becoming increasingly important. Users expect to see up-to-date prices, real photos, accurate room descriptions, the exact hotel location and clear booking terms. Even a minor error can result in a loss of trust.

Users may not know what technology is behind a service, but they notice errors very quickly. Conversely, when search works quickly, prices are up to date and booking goes smoothly, it builds trust in the platform. Ultimately, trust becomes the most valuable asset of any online booking service.

That is why B2B is more important than it may seem. It is not always visible to the end consumer, but it determines how quickly the market develops, how many new products emerge and how reliably online booking works. Ultimately, it is not the company that simply displays more hotels that succeeds, but the one that knows how to manage data, integrations and bookings effectively throughout the entire journey — from search to confirmation. This is one of the key factors shaping future competition in my view.

We do not see HotelStar as just another platform for selling accommodation. There are already enough services on the market that work directly with end users. Our task is to make it easier, faster and more cost-effective for these services to develop their hotel products.

Essentially, HotelStar is an infrastructure technology platform. We combine hotel content from various suppliers into a unified format and provide partners with access through a single API. This allows companies to avoid dozens of separate integrations and significantly reduce the time required to launch new services.

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

I am confident that platforms like these will determine the pace of development of the entire market in the coming years, because modern TravelTech is no longer built around individual websites, but around high-quality technological infrastructure.

Interviewer:

So, if we talk about the future in more detail, what do you think it will look like?

Olga Dolgova:

In the coming years, the market will become significantly more automated, intelligent and invisible to the user — I am convinced of that.

I believe the market will continue to develop in several key directions.

First, virtually all processes will become increasingly automated — from data processing to customer support.

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

Third, the role of infrastructure companies will grow significantly. More and more banks, marketplaces, ecosystems and digital services will offer travel products to their customers, but not all of them will build their own hotel platforms. It is much more efficient to use ready-made technological infrastructure.

That is why, in my view, the future belongs to companies that can bring data together, ensure reliable integrations and create unified technological standards for the market. At HotelStar, we value and adhere to the high service standards established in business. All our clients' data is stored on their corporate servers.

Ultimately, the entire industry will benefit. Users will receive more convenient services, hotels will gain more high-quality sales channels, and technology companies will be able to launch new products and scale their solutions faster. This is how I see the next stage in the development of Russian and global TravelTech.