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Mr. Colaco

Reservations / Online Pricing / Booking Engines

Tips on Good Offers to Generate Bookings on an Independent Website

By Pedro Colaco, President & CEO , GuestCentric Systems

Recap: What is a successful hotel website?

A successful hotel website is a website that maximizes its economic value to the hotel, i.e. it maximizes the number of e-commerce transactions in the form of bookings or contacts. To maximize the economic value of your website, you should pursue a structured e-commerce strategy. A successful e-commerce strategy relies on three key factors:

  1. Your website’s visibility
  2. Your website’s sales focus
  3. The bookable offers you promote on your website

Your website needs to perform well on all three factors otherwise no matter how much the investment you will not experience good results. That is why you should focus your attention on a structured e-commerce strategy.

Bookable offers is the ultimate goal for any hotel

We spent a fair amount of time in the last article explaining the importance of trusts mechanisms, instant online booking, real-time rates and availabilities, best available rates (BAR) and rate parity. But even if you get enough, relevant traffic, and the site is designed to convert lookers into bookers, no website can be a “sales machine” if there is nothing to sell or the product is not competitive.

Even the best technology will not succeed if there is no availability online, the online offers are not relevant to your prospective customers or your offering is not competitive in your region. Doing a detailed analysis to find the right balance is extremely important to engage your visitors, so you need to make sure you offer them what they are looking for.

Have your entire inventory at the best price on your web site

In order to maximize your e-commerce results, your official website should be used as your main channel for sales and the online travel agencies act as an added distribution point to support your offers. To help drive more direct reservations always advertise a Best Rate Guarantee on your home page and ensure that your lowest rate is always available on your hotel’s website, regardless of the several portals that you may be listed in. In addition to this, adopting a lower rate with booking restrictions such as minimum stay, advance purchase or a non-refund policy can give a new dimension to your pricing strategy and generate more revenue and increased occupancy.  

Last room availability to enhance clients’ loyalty

By guaranteeing that your website always offers the last room available of the property you will increase the traffic to your website and increase direct bookings. By doing this your clients will know that by visiting your website they will find availability at the best price. This will not only create more buzz around your website; it will also captivate the trust and loyalty of your clients.  

Be competitive make sure you sell value over pricing

Give value to your offers providing them with good descriptions and best quality photos. Describe your rooms, based on a careful product segmentation that sends the message of value and power to persuade your clients to buy. Avoid a mediocre presence with insignificant descriptions with just room measurements, basic amenities bullets and non-attractive promotions. Create content that differentiates your property from the competition with inviting room descriptions, good quality images and exciting promotions.  Remember that your website is your best sales representative thus it should transmit to the viewer the look and feel of your property. Ensuring that you have the tools to immediately react if a competitor changes their prices or launches a promotion is critical to being competitive in your region. When choosing a provider is extremely important that it allows immediate changes to your website.

Innovate with exclusive promotions

Your website should be a unique point of sale where online travelers can find your hotel’s best, exclusive and attractive promotions. Some of these promotions should only be available on your hotel’s website and not distributed to other points of sale such as phone reservations and other portals where your property is listed. You will be able to reward loyalty from your clients and gain key relationship information, allowing you to build powerful CRM databases for future hotel promotions and direct selling. Also this information will help you segment your offers to target clients with specific promotions created and directed only for them.

Engage your customers through the use of social media channels

Create your hotel web community, where you can list your rooms, promotions, nearby attractions, what to do, where to eat, and interesting information about the surroundings. Use social media tools like Facebook and Twitter to have direct communication with your clients in order to promote and sell your rooms and provide special offers for Twitter followers or Facebook fans. This will reflect on an increase in people that follow your property and create a snowball effect on the property’s brand. Have a hotel blog that you can use to communicate all your news to your clients, including limited time promotions and last minute bookings.  

Continually measure the efficiency of your promotions and room

Product segmentation shouldn’t be a set and forget task. Your weekly to-do-list should include monitoring the performance of your room types and promotions and evaluate their effectiveness in the market. You will probably discover that some rooms and promotions are not as successful as you had expected and others are far more successful than expected. Learn from experience rather than hints and improve your offering continually. A common mistake is selling and promoting single rooms when you know that single room occupancy percentage is very low.

Conclusion: E-commerce optimization is about dollars and sense

As you can infer from the key criteria identified above, it is critical to have the right offers, packaged correctly and laid out in the right outlets to maximize bookings. But that alone is not enough: your website needs to be sales oriented and you must pursue a strategy to get visitors to your site. Thus it is extremely important for you to monitor the actions performed on your website, since they will play a key part when planning your e-commerce strategy. This process is long and it will take you time to see the results but that does not mean that it has to be tedious and time consuming. 

At the end of the day, e-commerce optimization is about dollars and sense. Spend your dollars wisely, make most of your expense variable (i.e. a success-fee on booking through your website), and e-commerce success will follow.

Pedro Colaco co-founded GuestCentric Systems and serves as President and CEO. He has experience in networking and software, product development, marketing, sales and channel management in global markets. GuestCentric is in Stamford, CT with offices in UK and Portugal. It is a provider that revolutionizes independent hotel operators' competitiveness for customers. GuestCentric’s Hotel e-Commerce Optimization offers simple, cost-effective ways to create web sites, integrate online booking and marketing to boost revenues, lower expenses and develop long-standing customer relationships. Mr. Colaco can be contacted at 203-517-0721 or pedro@guestcentric.com Extended Bio...

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