Plough, If the motel was able to drive online customers to it's...

Plough,

If the motel was able to drive online customers to it's own website directly or to get people to call front desk to make a booking then there would be no need for aggregators and one stop shop booking sites like Wotif or Expedia.

What these services do is allow accommodation services to be discovered by travelers/holiday makers all on the one platform (billing, images, room options) which is convenient for consumers and saves on marketing and technology costs in trying to bring in customers, over the motel/hotel building their own platform and/or booking engine technology and keeping it up to date. Upfront IT costs are not cheap for small players.

Sounds like the Motel owner hasn't a clue on how to do marketing to bring in customers apart from using the Yellopages circa 1987.