If you’re running a hotel, you will want to get as many direct bookings as possible. The more you get, the more likely your business model will be successful.
In the following article, we will talk about direct bookings for your hotel. We’ll discuss what they are and why you want them. We’ll also go over some ways to attract more direct bookings for your hotel.
A direct hotel booking is a booking made by a customer that is done directly through your hotel. This is a contrast to indirect hotel bookings, like those a customer might make through a travel agent or a third-party booking site.
There are a few different ways someone can do a direct room booking through your hotel. They might do so in person by walking in and speaking to someone at the front desk. They can also book directly over the phone. If they book through your hotel’s website, that is also considered to be a direct booking.
As a hotelier, you want to get as many bookings as possible regardless of how the customer finds out about your hotel. The more of your rooms you fill, the better your business is going to do.
However, direct bookings are generally preferable to other kinds. That is because this type of booking lets you have a direct relationship with your customers. There are no intermediaries involved. If you get more direct bookings for your hotel, that usually means you can offer the customer more personalized service and communicate with them better.
There’s an even more crucial reason why you want to get as many direct room bookings as you can from your customer base. It’s because you will not have to pay any costly commission fees to an intermediary, like a third-party booking site.
While partnering with intermediaries is often useful if it helps to spread awareness of your hotel, you should expect to pay what amounts to a finder’s fee to your partners. That is always going to take a chunk of your profit, incentivizing direct bookings.
Now, let’s talk about some of the ways you might increase direct bookings. There are all kinds of strategies you might use to find success in this area.
Travelers can rate your hotel through entities like community forums and online directories. Some of your potential future guests will probably see these reviews.
You should have a process in place that lets you manage and collect this customer feedback. After a guest checks in, you need an automated system that sends them a message making sure they’re satisfied with the service so far. If they’re not, you can immediately take steps to remedy that.
When a guest’s stay concludes, you should also send them an automated survey that collects their impression. You can conclude this process by providing them with a link to review sites.
You should also respond to any negative reviews that you find posted online. By doing so, it lets customers know you care about them. These customers are much more likely to visit your website and to book with you directly.
It’s also helpful to set up and use guest messaging software. This can be a part of your property management system. Use this system to offer guests deals during their stay, special discounts, or personalized services.
For instance, maybe a guest visited the property recently for an anniversary dinner with their spouse. Now that you know the date of their anniversary, you might send them a coupon for dinner at your hotel’s restaurant a few weeks before that date the following year.
This kind of personalization makes it more probable that a guest will remember the good times they had in your hotel and book with you directly.
You can often secure direct bookings if you make yourself a known commodity in the hospitality industry. Send some of your workers to a trade show or convention, or attend yourself if you have the time. While you’re there, set up a booth and network.
You can learn valuable insights about what is going on in the hotel industry at the same time. If you learn about a trend that you feel like you should take part in, that is another way to make more direct bookings likely.
Most hoteliers know that they should use social media at this point. Some still don’t completely understand its value, though.
By figuring out what social media platforms your most likely guest segments use, you can focus on those and ignore others that are not going to be as relevant. You can also make a point of emphasizing direct bookings via your social media posts.
When you do, use CTAs. A strong call to action along with the promise of a special discount or promotion when someone books through your website should yield some positive results.
Regarding social media, it’s highly probable that the two platforms you are going to want to focus on the most will be Facebook and Instagram. You should set up a Facebook page for your hotel if you don’t have one yet. Once you do, you can add an action button to the page. You can link it directly to your booking engine.
When you do, you’ll get more direct bookings, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. You will also probably see less booking abandonment, which can frustrate you as a hotel owner. Having a guest reserve a room through your booking engine by clicking on your Facebook action button will create a seamless online experience that your would-be guest will appreciate.
As for Instagram, it’s potentially every bit as useful to you as Facebook. Instagram is a platform that is very visually oriented. By taking professional-quality pictures of your rooms, your hotel’s exterior, the onsite bar, your restaurant, etc., you are showcasing everything that’s most appealing about your property.
Individuals who are spending time on your hotel’s Instagram profile can reserve a room through a booking button that provides nearly instantaneous access to a custom booking page. Visitors who like what they see on your Instagram account can book a room without needing to either open a new tab or leave the app.
Past attendance at your hotel is always an indicator of a future customer, assuming you made them feel happy and comfortable during their stay. Set up an email marketing campaign targeting prior guests. Presumably, you already have their email address, so be sure to remind them about your hotel and what it has to offer, especially during times of the year when people are more likely to travel.
A loyalty program might encourage a previous guest to come back. A link through an email directly to your website makes a direct booking a distinct possibility. You should also go out of your way to try to sign guests up to your loyalty program by offering things like special benefits and perks that they can’t otherwise take advantage of.
If someone is a member of your hotel’s loyalty program, and they book directly through your website, let them know they can receive an exclusive discount. You might also set up a point system. When guests earn points by booking directly, they can cash them in for desirable rewards, such as room upgrades.
You might also encourage someone to sign up for a loyalty program by granting them early access to rooms during times of the year when they are most in demand. You can let guests know about tailored promotions through the loyalty program based on the data you’ve gathered about their preferences. You may also tell guests that they’ll earn more points if they book directly with you at certain times of the year.
Try to tie your loyalty program to direct booking in a guest’s mind. When they associate one with the other, they’ll get in the habit of booking directly, as they will want the points and access to the special perks that this behavior affords them. Loyalty programs, when used correctly, are arguably the most useful tool for getting direct bookings that hoteliers have.
When someone stays with you, they probably don’t just want a room. They might be looking for an experience that involves personalization in areas like social, economic, and environmental needs.
Try to communicate to your would-be guests that if they stay with you, they’ll get a unique experience tailored to their distinct requirements. If you’re running a small boutique hotel up in the mountains, then you might emphasize your hot tubs in each room, happy hour in the bar, world-class ski accommodations, etc. Make sure guests know they can learn more about all of that by visiting your website.
You want someone to book a room with you now, not at some point in the distant future. Mentioning flash sales via your social media channels or other forms of online marketing is often a smart idea.
Limited-time offers can create the urge in your potential customers to take advantage. They probably don’t want to miss out on those savings. If you can offer a value proposition that’s enticing enough, they will visit your website and book to avoid missing out.
If you can get someone to visit your website, you’re halfway toward getting them to book with you. However, maybe once someone gets to your site and starts looking around, they have some questions.
Try to anticipate those questions and address them on your site via an FAQ section. However, you should also have a bespoke chatbot that can talk to your would-be customers and answer any additional questions they have.
If they have even more queries that the bot can’t answer, make sure you have humans monitoring your website activity as well. AI can handle many interactions with your customers. However, you still need human workers standing by. They should be ready to make themselves useful to any of your potential customers who need a gentle nudge before they’re willing to book a room.
Much like setting up an interactive, intuitive website for your hotel, you also need to embrace digital marketing and all the opportunities it affords you. Use your property management system and the data it provides. You can figure out the guest segments that are most interested in staying at your hotel that way.
Once you have identified those segments, target them through SEO, search engine marketing, and metasearch engines. These can all help you get more site visitors that should hopefully translate to more direct bookings.
Remember that with marketing, you will always need to continue modifying your strategy. Something that works for a while might need tweaking a few months down the line, or you may have to discontinue that technique entirely in favor of something else.
Once a guest is using your booking engine, you should make it as easy as possible for them to set up their ideal stay at your hotel. However, you should also seamlessly integrate upselling and add-ons during this part of the process.
You might mention things like priority or valet parking, walking tours that highlight what your city or town has to offer, spa passes, transportation options to nearby shops, restaurants, and museums, etc. If your website is the only place that has all of these additional features, your customers might prefer booking there and not with OTAs.
If your website also has several rate plans that a would-be guest can use, they will probably appreciate that. For instance, you might have a flexible rate plan, an early bird one, or something else.
You might have split inventory as an option on your website as well. As the lodging operator, you can combine room types but offer them as a single unit. You might have this as a website exclusive that OTAs with which you have partnered do not offer. A more customized booking experience can lead to guest loyalty, more revenue, and an uptick in direct bookings.
If you’re directing more traffic to your website through SEO best practices or social media mentions, it won’t do you much good if a new potential guest arrives and sees a shoddy site that you hastily cobbled together. Take some time to examine your website with fresh eyes. Try to see it as a new customer would.
Make sure the site copy is easy to read and engaging. Take professional, full-color pictures of the hotel and feature them prominently. You might have a short video that plays as soon as a guest arrives at your landing page.
The better your website quality, the more likely you’ll land more direct bookings through it.
Finally, you will want to have a commission-free booking engine integrated with your website. It should also be mobile-friendly, since guests are even more likely to book with you via their cell phones instead of a desktop, laptop, or tablet.
The booking process through your site should charge no commission, and it should be easy enough that a guest can do it in no more than two or three steps. You might even consider having a rate checker as part of your site so that guests can be sure they’re getting the best available rate.
You never want a guest to leave your site to book through an OTA once they have arrived at the landing page. Persuade them not to do that by offering everything that an OTA does, but without the additional commission.
If you’re trying to get direct bookings, you might also think about partnering with an entity like Surf Office. This is a company based in Europe that sets up remote working retreats for various business entities. Many companies like to have offsite team-building experiences, and getting a big group of executives to come visit your hotel all at once can be tremendously beneficial for you.
There are several reasons for hotels to partner with an entity like Surf Office. If you enter into a working relationship with them, that is likely to increase your LoS, shorthand for length of stay. When larger groups of guests stay with you longer, that has a positive impact on your bottom line.
You will see higher TRevPAR as well. TRevPAR, or total revenue per available room, is another vital performance indicator that allows you to measure your hotel’s profitability. A partnership with Surf Office will also probably boost your occupancy rate during the slower times of the year when your hotel isn’t getting as many guests.
However, what might be best about establishing a relationship with Surf Office is that you can use it like a marketing tool that encourages direct bookings. Many of the attendees at an event at your hotel that Surf Office sets up will be discovering your facility and what there is to do around it for the first time. If they enjoy the time they spend with their colleagues at the retreat that Surf Office facilitated, you can feel certain that some of them will come back at a later date.
They may come on their own, with their significant other, or with their entire family. They will also act as unpaid promoters for your property, since they will likely tell others about it. That word-of-mouth advertising costs you nothing, but you will certainly see some positive benefits from it. It’s realistic to think that someone who hears about your company through word-of-mouth will visit your website and use it to book a stay with you directly.
These are not the only ways to increase direct bookings to your hotel. Creativity and ingenuity will always help you in this area. We’ve mentioned many of the more conventional and accepted ways of getting direct bookings that the industry uses today. However, it’s usually helpful to get together with your marketing team to talk to them about direct bookings as well.
See whether they have some more ideas that they think will make sense for your particular hotel. Remember that all hotels are different, so ways to increase direct bookings for one may not be applicable for another.
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