Hotel Direct Bookings: Things You Wish You'd Known Earlier

“Hotel direct bookings” is a technical term that conveys travelers to book their desired hotel straight from the hotel website, without any help or interference from the third party or OTAs.  

In this highly competitive generation, attracting new customers or nurturing old customers is very challenging. And from time to time every kind of entrepreneur needs to plan & apply clever strategies to hold and attract new customers. 

Hotel entrepreneurs identify the problem of how travelers have to go through so many steps to book a hotel at their budgeted price. Therefore hotel entrepreneurs always keep multiple options open, so that travelers can book their desired hotel using any kind of medium. Such as; website, OTAs’, hotel direct booking using hotel website, etc. 

What Are Hotel Direct Bookings?

In simple words, hotel direct bookings are a sort of direct booking process when travelers book their desired hotel room using the chosen hotel website without any kind of involvement of a third party; for instance, OTAs’(Online Travel Agency).

One of the biggest competitors of hotel direct bookings is OTAs’ and also kind of expenses for hoteliers; as hoteliers have to pay extra commission to OTA platform at every booking.  

The process of hotel direct booking is directly linked with hotel websites, therefore when users book a hotel room via hotel direct bookings, hotel owners use this opportunity to promote their brand, service and can build a one-to-one relationship with the consumers.

The major challenging part for Hoteliers is to make users understand the consequence of OTAs’ and encourage users to direct bookings from the hotel website. 

As a result, hotel entrepreneurs can utilize the opportunity to nurture and convert to a trustable relationship, gather personal data of the users and later use them to use for the marketing campaign, and also improvise the user experience.

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Features And Benefits Of Hotel Direct Bookings

Hotel direct booking is a sort of system using which hoteliers gain or reach their potential customers directly and quickly. 

And of course, advanced features of hotel direct bookings intelligence can improve the hotel-customer reach, hotel website visibility, monitor parity, and also booking engine conversation rate. 

Hence it becomes easy for hoteliers to compete with different OTA (online travel agencies), hotel channel managers and hotel booking engines, etc. 

The feature of hotel direct bookings plays a beneficial role for hotel business owners, for instance, improving revenue, profitability, customer engagement, online visibility, and the data gathering process becomes easy. 

These hotel direct bookings platforms make a path to test, analyze and optimize the hotel website landing page. 

List Of Some Advanced Features Of Hotel Direct Bookings:

• A/B Testing:

By using these features, hotel owners can test or analyze visitors' responses to your website. And using those statistics feedback hotel owners can improvise their hotel website so that visitors get to experience the best version and user-friendly hotel website.
 

• Widget: 

This feature helps the hotel owners to capture the users’ personal information and user behavior, nurture, and boost the trust of customer engagement.
 

• Track Parity: 

These tools help to track the OTAs, and how much they are undercutting the whole hotel package and hotel price rates. Hence can make their hotel price competitive and provide the best price to their customer through the hotel website.

• Live chat support:

While booking, customers or visitors might need support or need required information about certain matters. 

List Of Some Amazing Benefits Of Hotel Direct Bookings 

• No OTA commission: 

One of the biggest advantages of direct hotel booking for hoteliers is that they don't have to pay the big fat commission to OTAs. Hoteliers' main goal is to reach valuable customers without any sort of involvement of a third party like OTAs.

• Own Website, Own Recognition: 

Building your own hotel website it’s like establishing your own brand. When visitors come to your website, she/he will come to know about your services, price package, users review, etc. 

• Keep An Eye On Parity 

Monitoring and optimizing the other party, so that hoteliers can offer the best transparent price to the customer and also take back the converted customers of OTAs too.

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Why “Hotel Direct Booking System” Is Crucial For Hotels?

Hotel direct bookings; work as artificial intelligence for hotel business owners. Hotel business owners use this hotel direct booking strategy to 2x faster revenue, increase profitability, and direct customer engagement. 

Applying hotel direct bookings strategy in your hotel can be advantageous in many ways, let’s discuss some logical points: 

• No extra commission to any OTAs’, which results in gaining direct more valuable customers and raising 20%-30% revenue per booking. 
• The hotelier can collect personal data or user behavior, using the “heat-map analysis tool” or any widget plug-in. Therefore we can personalize customers' experience, and showcase packages or ads that match the customer usability.  
• When a customer uses a hotel website for direct booking, it’s obvious that he/she will get to experience the authentic value of your hotel.  
• Arrange different loyalty programs, such as promotional text over the phone, gratitude for great staying, and showcasing some seasonal offers. 
• Better engagement with customers, since the customer is dealing with you directly, so higher chance to nurture them and convert them into loyal customers. 

Which Is The Better OTA Platform Or Hotel Direct Booking?

Since the start of this blog; I’m talking about OTAs (online travel agents), let's break down and understand the difference between OTA and hotel direct booking. 

This comparison is done based on which platform or way would be better to raise revenue for the hotel business. 

Million-Dollar Question!!

Why Should You Choose Hotel Direct Booking Over OTAs’?

Some secondary sources such as hoteltechreport.com have suggested ROI earned from direct hotel booking is almost close to 2x of OTAs revenue.  

• Low customer acquisition cost    
• Follows granular control over hotel pricing strategy, as a result, hotel direct booking boosts 2x ROI. 
• Make your hotel website the best user-friendly hotel booking engine 
• Better a long-term loyal relationship with guests 
• A bad OTA service might hamper the goodwill of your hotel business
• Hoteliers can use the guests’ personal information for an email campaign to nurture them for future

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Hence The Answer To Your Dilemma Is “Of Course Hotel Direct Bookings” 

To confirm hotel direct booking, first, you need to set up your hotel website. The hotel website should be user-friendly, dynamic, mobile-friendly, responsive, UI/UX, attractive schema, simple pricing package, etc.

There are many hotel management software companies that come up with advanced hotel websites, for instance, Xain-hotel management software. Here’s an overlook and a small sneak peek of the hotel website. 

Constructing your own hotel website is very advantageous for hotel businesses. Here is a strong point, “Why You Should Choose Hotel Direct Bookings Over OTAs’?”

• Own recognized hotel brand: As a result, whenever a customer searches for a specific hotel name, your hotel website will show first on the search result page.
    
• Aggressive promotion: Hotel owners need to shout out their lungs and need to participate in many different paid campaigns, social media promotions, and google ads.
   
• Revenue management tactics: By using different analytics tools; for instance, google analytics, Hotjar, Yandex Matrica can help you keep track of hotel KPIs, customer behavior toward your hotel website, and can forecast the pricing range, market rate of OTA's commission per booking.   

Intelligent Way To Increase Your Hotel Direct Bookings 

OTAs’ is already giving strong competition along with charging high commissions from different hotel companies per booking. Nowadays hotel owners also understood; the importance of branding their own identity, direct conversion of the hotel guests, and 2x your revenue. 

1. Build an easy-to-operate hotel website 

• Smooth user experience 
• Responsive website with the hassle-free booking process

2. Increase the online visibility through

• Paid search
• Metasearch 
• Email marketing
• Google paid ads 
• Blog 
• Social media advertising

3. Plan different loyalty programs

• Exclusive discounts 
• Couple discounts 
• Swimming pool facilities 

4. Offer different attractive incentives 

• Free wifi 
• Welcome drinks
• Spa or massage facilitate 
• Late-check out facilities

5. Adopt Xain-hotel management system because this gives you

• Interactive website integration 
• Chance to enhance revenue 
• Increase the online presence of your hotel brand
• Better customer experience 
• Organized hotel operation 
• Save time used to waste on unnecessary manual maintenance 
• Automated yearly/monthly report

Parameters To Set For The Hotel Distribution Strategies 

It’s almost hard to predict which medium a consumer will choose to book their desired hotel and also hard to ensure that too. 

Hence a hotel owner should open up all the options to grab the attention of potential customers and not only depend on the hotel's direct booking system. 

Every hotel entrepreneur maintains the right balance between the OTAs and Hotel direct booking. Here is some required framework:

• Targeted Guest Persona 

Search the target audience, and depending on their preferable distribution channel, plan a strategy to reach them. After all, they are the ones who will ensure the final booking.  

• Geographical Location Coverage 

Make sure your website is internationally visible, can generate traffic worldwide, and can operate in multiple languages, hence can reach a customer of any country. 

• Track Of Hotel Occupancy Rate

Occupancy rate depends on the seasonal, objectives/ preference, etc. Therefore, make sure your website showcases all the rates, the number of rooms vacant, etc.   

• Volume Of Hotel Visitors

Keep track of the volume of hotel customers per season, month-wise, check-in, and booking a stay so that you can forecast the next year's sales using those statistics.

• Marketing Campaigns,

Of course, a strong marketing campaign is needed to attract new visitors to the hotel website instead of OTAs. 

• Customer Database

This module saves the customer demographics, personal information, buyer behavior, and preference. And using this data, hotel entrepreneurs can design their own marketing strategies. 

Building A Hotel Website Can Save Almost 40% To 50% OTAs Commission 

It’s a kind of universal truth and also a rule that different OTAs have set for the hoteliers, that hoteliers have to pay 40% to 50% commission to OTAs in exchange for each booking that happens through an online travel agency. 

And this commission giving system is one kind of expenditure for hoteliers. Whereas if a hotel owner converts any customer through hotel direct bookings (hotel website); the hotel doesn’t have to pay any kind of commission and also personalize a stable customer relationship with the customer.

But hoteliers’ don’t take or especially don't want to take such a risk, for instance abandoning every other opportunity or the way of customer conversion, because it might hamper their hotel business a lot. 

Hence even if hoteliers have to pay a lot of commission to OTAs, still the hoteliers, to some extent, still can’t fully cut off the OTAs.

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Let's Not Depend On OTAs Anymore

Time To Build Your Own Hotel Website 

Day by day OTAs are increasing their commission rate to hoteliers. Hence sometimes it becomes intolerable for new hoteliers. In addition, some OTAs do unethical activities; for instance, booking cancellations without notifying, claiming to overbook, and having bad behavior with the clients. And later, put blame on hoteliers to save themselves from a bad reputation.

Therefore, constructing your own hotel website can save you from hampering your hotel goodwill and from paying high commissions to OTA or any third parties. Building a hotel website can be very easy if you get the right integration from the hotel management system you adopt. 

There are many hotel management software available in the Envato market, among them, globally Xain- hotel management software is doing great in African and Asian regions.

Attractive And User-Friendly Hotel Website  

Conversion Of Direct Customer 

You must be in a dilemma, from where you can get help to construct an attractive and user-friendly website??

Yes, you can take the assistance of different WordPress themes or construct it through raw coding but at the same time, it also costs your time and money. In fact, it might create new confusion in your mind. 

Therefore to be on the safe side, it’s better to adopt a Hotel management software like the Xain-hotel management system.

With Xain- hotel management software, you not only get a hotel management tool but also get hotel website integration. And using this you can personalize your own hotel website according to your need.

Conclusion

Hotel direct booking is a beneficial part for hotel business owners; because they get the direct conversion of customers, zero risk to hamper the hotel's goodwill, and a chance to prove to be authentic. 

On a hotel website, a visitor gets deep information about the hotel service, facilities, discounts, etc, but that information is in OTAs. 

Read Also

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