Wholesalers are APAC hotels' fastest-growing channel
Wholesaler share of APAC hotel bookings has tripled since 2022 — the fastest growth of any channel — as retail OTA volume slows and hotels lock in contracted occupancy
by Markus Busch
The shift. D-Edge's 2026 distribution report finds that wholesalers and tour operators have grown from 1.8% of APAC hotel bookings in 2022 to 6.1% in early 2026 — more than doubling year over year, and outgrowing every other channel in the region. Bookings through wholesalers rose 82% between 2024 and 2025 alone. The pattern holds across the report's steady hotel panel, from corporate hubs like Singapore and Tokyo to leisure markets like Thailand and Bali. It is region-wide, not a local quirk. The supply side lines up: HBX Group — parent of Hotelbeds, the largest hotel bedbank — reported double-digit growth in transaction value across every region in the first half of 2026.
Why it is happening. The retail channels that carried the recovery have cooled. In the first quarter of 2026, Booking.com volume fell nearly 10% in APAC and Expedia fell 21%, the latter hit by softer long-haul demand from Europe and the US. Wholesale offers what retail no longer guarantees: contracted rooms, sold in advance at an agreed rate, with the demand risk carried by the wholesaler. For a hotel managing a volatile year, that is guaranteed base occupancy.
What hotels give up. Wholesale is the most opaque channel a hotel runs. Rooms are sold on through layers of B2B partners, so the hotel often cannot see the final retail price, and the guest arrives without a usable customer record — no email, no consent, no direct relationship to build on. The contracted rate can also become the floor others discount from, adding pressure on rate parity. These trade-offs are not new. What is new is how much volume now flows through the channel.
The direction matters. Over the same period the direct channel — the one hotels control most, with the lowest cancellation rate — slipped from 11.8% to 11.2% of bookings and fell 12.8% in the first quarter. Hotels are moving share from the channel they own toward the channel they see least.
What to do. D-Edge's own guidance is to treat wholesale as tactical: useful for stabilizing base occupancy in the 2–10% range, risky as a long-term structural dependency because of rate compression. The practical read for a revenue team: size it deliberately. Use wholesale to hold occupancy through a soft quarter, watch its effect on parity, and keep it from crowding out the direct and retail channels that carry the guest relationship.
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