Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the HEDNA Winter Conference on Metasearch Bid Management. The session also included Jason Price from HeBS Digital and Jon Eichelberger from Trivago, and was moderated by Steven Rubin.

I think we were able to cover some great content and talk through some interesting questions and viewpoints thanks to the prep work of the supporting staff and the engagement from the audience. If you haven’t attended HEDNA events you’re missing out!

I thought it might be helpful to post a few links related to the content we discussed:

Steven shared some excellent content from the Meta Working Group’s 2016 whitepaper. You can see an excerpt of the paper here and download the full paper here. (Note: You have to be a HEDNA member to download the full paper.)

I spent a lot of time talking about our R=f(De,C,Di,O) model. You can read more about that in Metasearch at Scale, which is available for free download. A lighter version is also available.

Some great questions came up about Core Data after the session. If you’d like to learn more about why Core Data is important, check out this awesome post.

In the Q&A, there was a smart question around whether consumers realize they are booking with the end provider during a metasearch experience. I shared insights from some of our own research, which can be reviewed here. (Essentially, we see lots of polarization in terms of what segments of users see and understand.)

Jason made some great points around when metasearch isn’t the end-all for a campaign, along with some interesting stats about the space in general. Jason also makes an interesting case for dynamic rate marketing being a key innovation that can drive more value for hotel marketers. If you haven’t seen it, HeBS Digital puts out some thought provoking articles and research especially from the perspective of independent hoteliers.

Thanks again to the panel and participants, it was a great time! Feel free to reach out or comment below if there are any additional questions or topics we didn’t get to cover.