Hotel Direct Booking

Hotel Direct Booking is referring to the room booking received via the hotel's official website or via phone calls, emails, and walk-ins. This means that direct bookings made by the guests are without going through a middleman like OTAs which takes a commission from the bookings. A hotel direct booking is the cheapest channel for the hotel to receive bookings from guests, it serves the purpose to free commission which helps to maximize the hotel's revenue. 

Why Direct Booking is Important?

95% of travelers are now using the internet to find accommodation for their stay during business or leisure trips.  Usually, they will use Google - the giant search engine and find your hotel from different platforms. They are many popular OTA platforms where you can advertise your hotels such as Booking.com, Agoda, Expedia, and more. 

But firstly, why you can't rely only on OTAs?

1. OTAs charge a commission on every booking made by the guests via their platform. Averagely, the commission charged by the OTAs is around 15-17%. 
2. OTAs may also contribute to a high number of last-minute cancellations or no-shows if you go with collected by the hotel upon check-in 
3. The tendency of travelers to look for your hotel on Google is high, but if they can't find your hotel website for direct bookings,  to get more useful information, they might return to OTAs and there will be a potential where they will find another hotel too
   
   

Other than OTAs, there are many more channels that can help to bring sales for your hotels like Hotel websites, Facebook pages, Instagram, and other social media. You can actually save a lot of commission if you can focus more on bringing sales from direct bookings. The commission that you save from paying to the OTAs is where you can use that money for a marketing budget. remuneration for your employees, etc.

How to Increase Hotel Direct Booking? 

Here's the thing. You need to have traffic in order to increase your direct booking from online sources. Traffic is essential to any online business as it will convert visitors to customers. Without traffic, a website will not generate sales. The more people visit your site, the more potential customers you will have, hence the more significant opportunity to bring more sales revenue to your hotel.

5 Ways to Increase Traffic

1. Google Free Booking Link

   Google Free Booking Link is an opportunity to drive more traffic which helps to increase hotel direct bookings as well as compete with OTAs in brand queries. It is basically a dedicated block of links that are put under Google Ads in the Google Search Result. 

   You only need a hotel booking engine that integrates with Google for this feature. If you have better rate offers on your booking engine, the guests will be more likely to book direct with you rather than the OTAs. Hit the red button below to have more understanding about how Google Free Booking Link will help you in increasing direct booking and less reliance on OTAs to maximize your hotel’s revenue.

    

    

2. Hotel Website

   A hotel website is a common platform for many businesses for them to better showcase their brand and create a strong identity. Having a good hotel website means the hotel will also have a powerful marketing tool that helps to increase sales and revenues.
   
   

   A good hotel website should have the following elements:

   - User-Friendly Website Navigation
   - Responsive & Mobile-friendly Design
   - Clean and clear formatting 
   - Good quality images and videos 
   - SEO Optimization
   - Call To Action
   - HTTPS - a secure website 
   
   When it comes to booking directly from the website, Google Analytics can tell you where your visitors' location is, which sites your visitors come from, or even how long they view your hotel website. With this useful information, you will know your buyers' persona and make use of it for any promotion and marketing campaign. 
   
   
   
   

3. Google Business Profile

   Google Business Profile is a library of static knowledge such as historical events, notable people, places, and hotels. By having a Google Business Profile, you will be able to share information about your hotel with everyone who finds you via Google Search and Google Maps. 
   
   Here are the pretty things you should follow:
   
   - Claim your Google Business Profile and make sure it is being verified 
   - Encourage your guests to leave reviews on Google 
   - Make sure your hotel photos, and information is being updated 
   
   Read also: How to List My Hotel on Google 
   
   

4. Social Media

   Social media is another important tool in this era to promote products and services. Many businesses are using social media because it is easy to use and simple, it is also been widely used by more than billions of people in the world. 
   
   If you are looking for more information about social media marketing strategy, hit this blog. We shared a step-by-step guide on how you can fully utilize social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok to bring traffic and increase brand awareness about your hotel.
   
   Wanted to try but not sure where you can start? You can go with your Facebook Page first. Check out the video below on how you can increase your hotel bookings from Facebook. 
   
   

    

5. Offline to Online

   Offline marketing refers to any advertising carried out using traditional offline media such as television, billboard ads, and radio. Below are some ideas for offline advertising that you can do. Note that some of them need a budget explicitly allocated for advertising.
   
   - Handing out tangible objects with your brand’s logo
   - Print advertising example pamphlets
   - Television advertising
   - Loyalty programs
   - Coupons and discount pricing
   
   Using offline advertisement indirectly will bring your potential guest to your social media and website thus boosting your traffic. You only need a hotel booking engine to be installed so that they can book directly with you online. You are still looking for the best hotel booking engine? I have some recommendations in my Hotel Booking Engine blog. In this blog, I include also the demo video together with the link for you to easily claim your free trial account. 

   

Why do hotels prefer direct booking?

1. 24/7 Access

   Your hotel reservation system is available 24/7, it becomes more convenient for your guests to book any time, anywhere, and on their device of choice. Allowing bookings 24 hours a day will allow guests from different time zones to make bookings at times that are convenient for them.
   
   

2. Competitor Advantages

   There are still many small to medium-sized hotels that do not use online booking systems. This puts them at a disadvantage as their market reach is significantly reduced. They limit themselves to outbound advertising and word of mouth which reduces their chances of getting bookings. Having an online booking system will allow you to have an edge over these competitors.
   
   

3. Seamless Booking Process

   The booking process should be as simple and straightforward as possible. The more the hassle the more likely it is for guests to give up on the transaction. An example of this is when a potential guest finds out about you from their preferred social media site such as Facebook then is allowed to place a booking immediately within the site by simply hitting a “Book Now” button.
   
   

4. Offer Loyalty Incentive

   By having your own site and using direct booking, you have more funds to allocate for loyalty rewards that would have been previously paid as commission. You may promote these loyalty incentives on social media as a means to gradually build a following of loyal customers.
   

The benefits of hotel collecting direct booking

1. Build and control your hotel’s brand

   The best way to build a good relationship with your guests is by interacting with them directly, instead of via third-party booking channels such as OTAs. When a guest books directly with hotels, it means that hotels have all the guest information and profiles from the beginning and you are the one that guides them through the entire booking process.
   
   

2. Offer guest loyalty program or incentive

   Keeping a good relationship with your guest is important to encourage more loyal customers. Make sure to keep your guests warm by sending marketing follow-up emails, the hotel's latest promotions or the hotel may also run promotions that only target the guests who have stayed before or for your VIP guests only by creating a private promo code for their future stay use.
   
   

3. Collect guest feedback upon check-out

   It allows the system to auto-send a follow-up email to the guest that has just checked out their stay from your hotel and to collect their honest feedback about their stay at your hotel to better manage your customer experience.
   
   

4. Better manage and control room rate

   It will be easy for hotels to control their room rates when they don’t have many OTAs to deal with. As you can play around with your room rates and pricing strategy. For example, you can offer some discount on your room rates for guests that book directly but you may not be able to do the same with an OTA since a fixed percentage will be collected as commission.
   
   

5. Commission-free

   There is no middle charge or any additional charge such as commission. You get the exact amount of your booking amount.

   Read Also: Smart Strategies To Increase Your Hotel Direct Booking
   
   

Conclusion

With the best hotel booking engine system, one may reduce the time spent on daily operation tasks with automation helping hotels save a large number of funds, not to mention the commission paid to the OTAs for every booking. With the direct booking, you can better manage your hotel cash flow, as well as better, manage your customer database with full control of your guest information as OTAs tend not to share customer data or not allow you to reach out to the guest directly pre-or post-stay, with customer data your team can create marketing campaigns and make data-driven decisions.