Optimal Hotel Strategy with OTA: Traditional, Green, or Mixed Under Different Cooperation Modes

As consumer demand for green products and sustainability awareness continue to rise, hotel groups are now expected to go beyond merely satisfying basic needs through traditional strategy. They should align their environmental and social responsibilities with consumers’ increasing preference for sustainable options. As a result, green transformation becomes an urgent strategic imperative. Based on the current cooperation modes between hotels and online travel agencies (OTAs), this paper constructs Stackelberg game models to examine three scenarios: single traditional hotels, single green hotels, and a mixed scenario of traditional and green hotels. Under each scenario, we further consider two cooperation modes between the hotel and OTA—wholesale and agency modes—to explore the impact of consumer preferences on the hotel’s optimal strategic choices. The result shows that (i) the green preference coefficient is positively correlated with the green hotels’ profit. The green discount coefficient only takes effect under the full-coverage strategy of single green hotels, and is positively correlated with the green hotels’ profit. (ii) Agency mode effectively eliminates double marginalization. Specifically, when the commission rate falls between 25% and 50%, both the hotel and the platform can obtain higher profits than under wholesale mode. (iii) For both the hotel group and the OTA, the mixed strategy (strategy 3) always yields the highest profit. This paper fills a gap in the research on green transformation strategies under different cooperation modes between hotel groups and OTAs based on consumer heterogeneity.