Hoteliers are getting savvier at driving their own direct bookings. Take a look at these 8 actionable tweaks that can improve your booking engine conversion!
1. Make your visitors’ life easy.
Make sure that room names across all OTAs and website are the same. Travelers visit more than one website before they complete booking so that they can compare prices. If you have exactly the same names it’s clearer for visitors when booking.
2. Keep it simple.
Don’t have an infinite scroll of rooms/promotions. The booking process should not be difficult. A long scroll of rooms/promotions can confuse and frustrate travelers.
3. Provide Exclusive Offers.
Although properties might want to maintain the price parity across all OTAs and website, for contractual purposes, properties can still provide better offers on their website by offering some extras for booking exclusively on their website. For example, breakfast, a late check-out, extra beds, etc.
4. Create a Members Only Rate
Still, on the subject of parity, hotels can have a members’ only rate that is below the OTAs price. This can be a locked price accessible using a promotion code that will be lower than all the other rates, making the property’s website the lowest rate without breaking any contractual clauses with OTAs.
5. Have a booking engine loading message.
Booking engines can take a few seconds to open. You can use this time to share an important message with visitors. Properties can take advantage of it to highlight exclusive perks of booking direct or even reveal the members-only promo code.
6. Include urgency messaging (Shopping Activation)
Like OTAs, properties too can benefit from urgency. This has a big influence on buying behavior as it entices visitors to book faster with less price comparison. It gives visitors a specific and compelling reason to act at the moment and makes them more confident about their choice.
7. Include prices in the booking engine calendar.
Like air travel, making prices for different days available on one screen allows visitors to quickly browse rates and special offers to find the best deals. This view will keep potential customers browsing for a far longer time and as a result, can increase conversion.
8. Use abandonment messaging (Shopping Recovery)
Some visitors may have never had the intention to make a reservation in the first place. It is still worth putting in the effort to resolve as many lingering hesitations as the property can. To recover lost customers before they abandon the booking engine, properties can set up the shopping recovery tool with the trigger exit-intent feature. This way, every time a visitor tries to close booking engine, a message suggesting a better deal can pop-up.
For successful Hotel Revenue Management getting your direct booking strategy right is key for a healthy distribution balance.
Find out how we can help you today!