It´s tough being a Director of a Hotel or Resort, not only over the last 10 years hotels have had to deal with their relationship with OTA´s, they are now being told to connect with meta search agencies such as Google and Tripadvisor. Whilst on the horizon, companies such as Amazon are lurking in the background ready to enter the market and Airbnb that is due to become a big competitor in the business travel market
So how can we help you make sense of all these changes in order for you to take right decisions for your hotel or resort?
Here are 5 simple steps to keep you ahead of your competition:-
1st Step – Your current technology.
The majority of independent hotels have a channel manager and most (especially in southern Europe) have them with the same provider as their booking engine, which may or may not be providing you with a good conversion rate. We recently conducted a survey where we ask European hotels what percentage of bookings came via their own website, Over 75% received less than 40% of their reservations, which is low. I have demonstrated in many hotels that with a good converting booking engine and visibility, you can gain over 50% of your online business via your web so it pays to choose one carefully, look at the booking engine from a client perspective, not a revenue manager one. Our advice is to always separate your booking engine from your channel manager as you do not have the hassle of constantly changing your connections from one provider to another and it provides you with flexibility should your booking engine provider stop investing and improving their technology. Connectivity is one thing, selling is another.
2 Step – Meta-search & OTA´s
Do you need to contract with everyone? The answer is no, with the introduction of sites like Trivago, clients will always find your best price through searches. Giving your guests not as many options is not a bad thing and it is a better way to control your rates. You can also stop connecting to agencies that have the highest commission. I closed off Expedia in a hotel where I was paying 25% and I kept booking.com at 17%, the business moved from one to the other, demonstrating that hoteliers to a certain degree can control where their clients buy from.
Meta searches are where it allows your guests to shop for rates in one place and by placing ads, your hotel can compete with the likes of Booking, Expedia etc. We view Google Hotel Price Ads as fundamental and will become a revenue stream for hotels especially from mobile devices. If your hotel is investing in Adwords, you should be connected already. Most marketing companies are Google Partners and can help you get up and running. It is also key that you focus on your google reviews as this will also effect your positioning on search results. Tripadvisor has introduced Instant Booking which will charge a commission on every reservation. This is also worth considering but bear in mind to stop sending your clients that visit your website to go off to visit your review page on their site. Your conversions will go down. We can show how you can publish your reviews from Tripadvisor, Google, and Facebook without them leaving.
Step 3 – Pricing
Ok, so you have a booking engine that is giving you good conversions, you have a channel manager such as Siteminder that connects you with your best performing and cheapest commission OTA´s. You are using Google Hotel Price Ads and you are receiving bookings from TripAdvisor Instant Booking. Great, you offer price parity to everyone, however, Booking and Expedia recently announced they were getting rid of the price parity clause in their contract, meaning that a hotel can sell cheaper with an OTA of their choice. So what do you do now? Well depending on the rate of commission you pay, you can analyse from which agency you can gain the best Rate from and adjust the rates accordingly. This will allow you another way to condition from which agency your guests book you. Bear in mind though that OTA´s like booking make it very easy for their clients to book with saved credit card details etc, so this has to be analysed also.
Step 4 – Improve your booking engines conversion rate
So with your rates and connectivity all set, it is time to sell! Now your cheapest channel is always going to be your website. So here are some great tips to help you improve your conversion rates:-
1) Pop Ups – Hotels have been using this successfully where a client who has checked a rate on your site, click off to booking.com to compare. Up pops a window offering them a chance to book 10% cheaper if they reserve in the next 20 mins which are a great for you on improving your rate and the guest is getting a better deal. You also get their email address too!
2) Add-ons – Does booking.com offer add-ons or extras? so why do hotels offer this before checkout? Guests are also more open to spending more on add-ons or extras once they have already made the decision to buy from you.
3) Retargeting for search ads – A massively underused marketing resource from google that promotes your hotel to you guests searching specific keys words after they have visited your site. This method is getting very good conversion levels and is more cost effective that AdWords.
4)Reputation Marketing – I explained this earlier, but good to mention this again. promote your reviews without your visitors needing to click off your site.
5)Most hotels now have a mobile responsive website -If you don´t, you better get one quick, 70% of travellers in the UK use their mobile to either research or reserve hotels.
5 – Watch the Market
The final point is to make sure you are aware of what is going on. Amazon could be an important entry into the market especially considering the client database as well as they way their clients pay for products on their site. They are currently doing trials in New York. Airbnb could also be a danger for hotels especially as they are actively targetting business travel. Hotels will need to be on their toes to react to this challenge
Need more help? Hotelient can provide your hotel with a free, no obligation review of your current online setup in order to maximize your online marketing and distribution. Email us for further information:- info@hotelient.net
