Mr. Tarasofsky

Reservations / Online Pricing / Booking Engines

Online Reservations: Increasing your site's 'Look to Book' ratio

By Jerry Tarasofsky, CEO, iPerceptions Inc.

Hospitality web site's "look to book" ratio is a benchmark that can be directly compared and related to shopping cart abandonment. There is no real difference between making buying something online and making an online reservation. Both require the use of a credit card and a commitment to make a purchase.

Data taken from the most recent Rush Report on User Satisfaction & Hotel Web Site Performance published by Hospitality e-Business Strategies and iPerceptions confirms that the overall "look to book" ratio in the hospitality sector is approximately 65/35 - in other words, for every ten people who visit your site only three actually make a reservation. Imagine how your revenue numbers might look if you could increase that ratio by 25%. Do the math and I'm sure you will agree reservation abandonment is one of the most important issues facing hospitality web sites today.

I have used this example in other articles before, but it makes my point - what if seven out of every ten people waiting to check in to your hotel suddenly walked out with no explanation and went somewhere else. That's exactly what's happening on your web site when people abandon the reservation process. You've got them ready to check-in but at the last moment they up and disappear.

My guess is, if this situation took place in a traditional bricks and mortar location, you would quickly take the appropriate actions to find out what the problem was and without any hesitation you would implement a program to insure that once people entered your hotel, they opted to stay.

Your web site for all intents and purposes is your online property and should be treated in much the same manner as your traditional bricks and mortar location. With six out of ten prospective customers abandoning the reservation process, there is much room for improvement.

Following this same analogy in the traditional world, would it not make sense to stop the people leaving your hotel and ask them what the problem is?

You can always watch them from a distance to try and understand more about their entire experience with your hotel. This could include timing how long they had to wait to be served or observing how well your staff responded to their queries, even possibly tracking whether they arrived by cab, limo, or subway. But unless you stopped to them and ask, you'll never know for sure why they left.

When it comes to your web site, observing behavior is in some ways easier, but obtaining an understanding of your customer's overall experience is far more difficult. You should all be familiar with and be using one of the basic web analytics tools that analyze your server log and click-stream data. These tools help you understand where people went in your site, what pages were viewed most, how much time was spent at your site, where people came from and from which page they exited your site. These behavioral metrics tell you what is happening at your site and are extremely valuable in helping you determine that there is a reservation abandonment problem.

In the context of understanding reservation abandonment, knowing you have a problem is important but understanding why visitors are leaving your site prior to completing the reservation process and rectifying the situation is the real challenge. If you want to get to the core issues that are driving your "look to book" ratios, you'll need to invest in some form of attitudinal metrics that tell you the reasons behind why something is happening.

In analyzing feedback from over 85,000 visitors to some of North America and Europe's most well know hospitality web sites we know for instance, that:

1) You must convince your web site visitors the rate you are quoting at your site will not be undercut by an intermediary. Visitors will abandon your reservation engine unless some mechanism is in place to lessen this concern. That is why we have all seen the rise of the "Lowest Price Guarantee" on most hospitality sites. It reassures users that the price they are getting is the best available.

2) We also know that visitors to hospitality web sites are still very concerned about security and identity theft and dislike providing credit card information over the Internet. You might want to think about giving visitors the option of providing their credit information over a secure encrypted link - and make sure they know the link was created to provide them with additional security and safety.

3) You should also review your privacy policies and make sure your visitors know that the data they provide you when registering is not going to be resold or rented to a third party. Privacy is an extremely important issue with most web site visitors. Many visitors will not complete a reservation up to the request for a credit card - even if the card is only for late check-in purposes. Your visitors must believe that the personal information they are providing you will be held in the strictest confidence.

4) If you want to increase your "look to book" ratio, make the reservation process simple and fast - the fewer clicks the better and remember that people making a room reservation at your site do not want to be inundated with information that is not relevant to their stay. And once a visitor has completed a guest profile, use it whenever they return to make another reservation. There is nothing more frustrating for a user than to be forced re-input data they have previously provided a web site.

5) Users also should be able to access the reservation engine from any page within your site. They might be simply looking for places of interest near your hotel and decide the location is perfect. They should be able to immediately click on a "make a reservation" button rather than go looking for the specific section of the site where the reservation engine resides.

In summary, if you want to reduce reservation abandonment you must understand what is going on in the hearts and minds of the people visiting your web site and take the necessary steps to reduce or eliminate every single pain-point that contributes to a less than satisfied web site visit. Increase satisfaction and increased reservation conversion will follow.

Jerry Tarasofsky is CEO of iPerceptions Inc. Its webValidator® "captures the voice" of the online customer, helping companies learn more about their customers. Using a comprehensive perceptual framework to evaluate key elements of the visitor experience and, algorithms and modeling to identify attributes that drive satisfaction. The webValidator solution turns data points into easy-to-understand strategic and tactical decision support. iPerceptions’ clients in the hospitality sector include Crowne Plaza, Omni, Savoy, Wellesley, Homestead, Radisson and Holiday Inn. Mr. Tarasofsky can be contacted at jerryt@iperceptions.com Extended Bio...

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