Based on research and data from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Smith Travel Research, TravelClick, and PhoCusWright, PricewaterhouseCoopers finds that average U.S. hotel room rates booked online increased 8.7 percent compared with a 6.8 percent estimated overall hotel room rate increase for U.S. hotels in 2006. The largest increase among online bookings, 8.9 percent, was for the "opaque" distribution channel, those third-party sources represented by online reservations that do not reveal the identity of a hotel until a reservation has been placed. The largest percentage increase in the number of reservations among all distribution channels was for branded web sites operated by hotels.