though, hotels often do themselves no favours here. If an aggregator has rooms for $200 a night and the hotel gets 80% of that, you'd think the hotel would take 100% of $200 from a direct booking, but often it'll be $300+... Conceptually, booking direct should be cheaper since the hotel sees all of the money (and users of an aggregator pay for the convenience/discovery/ease factor)
Some of the big chains now have a "best rate guarantee" intended partly as marketing, and partly to pressure their franchisees to offer the cheapest rates through the official booking channel. If you book directly and then find a cheaper rate elsewhere within 24 hrs, they'll match + usually give you something extra. For example Holiday Inn matches plus makes the first night free; Hyatt matches plus an extra 20% discount; etc. This is enforced by corporate management's customer service, but gets charged back to the individual hotel, making for interesting dynamics.
In practice whether this actually works is all over the map. Some chains will deny the claim if the cancellation terms are even slightly different, e.g. they'll say the rate on the official site was more expensive but doesn't violate the best-rate guarantee, because it allows cancellation until 6pm, instead of 5pm, which is a better set of terms. This then makes it easy to discount in third-party channels without technically violating the guarantee, by deliberately modifying the terms slightly. Other chains follow closer to the spirit of the "guarantee", but it's a bit of a lottery.
As for why they don't just offer their best rates on the official channel to begin with, without some kind of policing from the franchiser: mostly, it's market segmentation based on price sensitivity. People booking at an aggregator are more likely to have no real brand loyalty and be sorting by price, so hotel owners want to discount their rates to show up competitively in the comparison. But people booking through hyatt.com or holidayinn.com are more likely to have brand loyalty, possibly be accumulating points/status on the company dime, possibly are already committed to a specific hotel, etc. The hotel in this channel isn't competing as directly with side-by-side search results from other brands, so doesn't want to unnecessarily discount. It's in the brand's long-term interest if the official channel becomes known as having the best rates, but each individual hotel may sometimes benefit from charging more through the official channel and discounting elsewhere, hence this back-and-forth between the franchise owners and the brand management.
"In practice whether this actually works is all over the map. Some chains will deny the claim if the cancellation terms are even slightly different, e.g. they'll say the rate on the official site was more expensive but doesn't violate the best-rate guarantee, because it allows cancellation until 6pm, instead of 5pm, which is a better set of terms. This then makes it easy to discount in third-party channels without technically violating the guarantee, by deliberately modifying the terms slightly. Other chains follow closer to the spirit of the "guarantee", but it's a bit of a lottery."
Best Buy is guilty of this too. Not their worst offense, but a lot of things that are harsh on price match, like hard drives, often have their own retailer-specific model number. The same drive might be identical, but the one on Amazon has a different model number to BBY to thwart price matching.
Having some experience in this area, some hotels were only getting 1/3rd even 1/4th of the sticker price on the aggregator website.
Part of this was on the hotel though, for not managing their rates through the aggregator properly. Often hotel management would call up angry about the rate they received, but they could barely use a computer, much less manage using multiple aggregator's backend websites.
I find saying something like: "I'm confused, because I can find a better price online for this room of $XX.XX" works every time that I've used it. I've never even had to apply the additional pressure of: "It seems unnecessary, but if you can't match that, then I guess I'll have to book online."
Telling an aggregator "I'm going to be selling this room for $180, why don't you guys sell it for $200" is a good way to end the talks right there. The middle ground is arranging some kind of "lowest published price" agreement, where neither party can go below the price, but can lure the customer via some other non-monetary methods (points, loyalty rewards, etc.)
I think part of it may be price discrimination. The customer that comes to your site directly already has your hotel in mind, and is probably less price sensitive, so you fleece them. The customer that goes to the aggregator is more price-sensitive, so you ask for a lower price in order to get at least some money out of them.