These days more and more hotels are springing up. Hotels try their best daily to fill their rooms and make more profit. Due to there are now more options when it comes to hotels, hoteliers now try their best to offer excellent customer service and satisfy their guests. Here, we listed down some of the hotel booking trends in 2019 that every hotelier should know.
Recently, customers have started realizing the importance of booking directly from the hotel website compared to online travel agents (OTAs). The benefits include interactions with the hotel staff and the ability to get all your questions answered. They can also view the hotel’s rooms and facilities, and enjoy all the incentives the hotel offers to their direct booking guests. Besides, hotels have also started upgrading their booking engines to bring them up to the standard used by OTAs. So, direct booking is becoming one of the booking trends in 2019.
Read: Direct Booking Tools for Hotel - What You Need to Know
The time has passed when hotels don’t care about their reviews and feedback of their hotels on the review platforms and sites. Today’s negative reviews about your hotel can chase away potential guests and drop your revenue drastically. As a hotelier, you should always check these review sites and see how your hotel is doing. You should also respond to these reviews and promise to do better when necessary.
Read: Why Guest Feedback Is Important For Hotels
Mobile booking is rapidly growing daily. Some guests these days do everything on their mobile phones from room booking, making payments, and paying for the things they need during their vacations. Knowing this, as a hotelier, you should make sure that you have a mobile version of your booking engine which is user-friendly and responsive. This is because mobile booking has come to stay.
Read: Mobile Travel Trends that Hotelier need to know
Previously, if a guest wants to interact with the hotel front desk staff before booking a room, they will call and maybe send an email to clarify their doubts. Chat apps have overshadowed this particular trend. Now guests can chat with the hotel front desk staff on the go when they are on the hotel website or before they make a booking decision. Most hotels already integrated this feature on their website but if your hotel has not done so, you should start to worry.
Hotel booking doesn’t stop after a room is booked. Guests now want to book activities and tours in the city they are visiting. As a hotelier, you should partner with the local tour agencies and include this tour and activities packages among your offering.
Social media booking should not be left out among the booking trend of 2019. As a hotelier, you should make sure that the booking engines you are using equip with social media booking features. Your guests are on social media, so why won’t your booking engine be on social media too.
Read: Hotels Should Implement These 5 Doable Social Media Strategies
In conclusion, as the year 2019 is coming to an end, hotels need to keep track of the latest trends in hotel booking as to not be left out and lose to other competitors.