Data-led investigation of Daily Deal practices in the Italian hotel industry

This research explores the underexamined phenomenon of hotels utilizing niche Daily Deals (DD) websites as a strategic distribution channel. Discounting, i.e. manipulations of price to boost demand, is a common hotel practice (Croes and Semrad, 2012). Despite Daily deal websites (DD) holding a significant presence in the travel market as a go-to inventory-distribution channel, they remain a largely unexplored phenomenon (Berezina et al., 2016; Geerts and Masset, 2022; Budler et al., 2020). Extant research related to DDs relies on self-reported data of various stakeholders (e.g. Cassia et al., 2020; Geerts and Masset, 2022).