~Updated on 9th November 2022~
A hotel booking engine is a system where it is installed on the hotel website or any social platform like Facebook, and allow guest to make a reservation online and secure the booking with payment. With a hotel booking engine, hotels will be able to drive more direct booking which helps reduce the paid commission to OTAs and hence increase the hotel's revenue.
The main functions of a Hotel Booking Engine are:
- To facilitate the guest booking process
- To show the rates and available options based on the search criteria (arrival date, number of nights, and number of pax, etc)
- To record booking and collect payment
- To notify both guest and hotel on bookings made online
A good hotel booking engine should have the following features:
- Mobile-friendly (so guest who navigates your site has a good experience buying using their mobile phone)
- A simple and practical booking journey (2 to 4 steps to complete a transaction)
- Payment gateway options. Offer as many payment options as possible for the guest so they can choose their preferred method
- Comes with a smart promotion code system
- Allow guests to request cancellation or modification online (it should tighten with the hotel cancellation policy being set in the system)
- Allow customization to suit your theme (e.g corporate colors etc)
- Offer options to upsell your hotel services (e.g. extra beds, early check-in, airport transfer, spa, etc)
- E-commerce tracking capability (e.g. Google Analytics, Google Adwords, and Facebook Ads Tracker). Track and measure your user behavior and runs a re-marketing campaign and traceable ROI
- Google Free Booking Link Integration - which helps to display your booking engine rate on Google Business Profile, your potential guests can compare the rates between booking engine and OTAs. If you are unsure what is the Google Free Booking Link about, below is the video for your reference
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The trend of online shopping is increasing and has surpassed offline shopping, no hotel should be operating without a hotel booking engine!
Read more about the benefits of using Hotel Booking Engines in this blog: Booking Engine for Hotels
If you are currently looking for Hotel Booking Engines that can help you in streamlining your direct booking process, below are the Top 5 Recommended Hotel Booking Engines that you may consider choosing from. Let's take a look at what each of the providers offers, you may also apply for their trial account for free and experience it yourself.
Softinn
Softinn Booking Engine aims to help hotels in the direct booking strategy with commission-free and the ability to install on any HTML website and social platform. Having said that, you can provide a great experience to your potential guests anywhere whether on your hotel website, Facebook, WhatsApp or many others.
Below are the highlighted features that Softinn Hotel Booking Engine offers:
- Integration with the Google Free Booking Link
- Smart Promotion Code System where you can distribute them for public use or private. Create for early bookers, last-minute promos, or normal promotions.
- Smart-Review System to invite the guests to leave reviews on Google
- Automate the booking cancellation. Guests can submit the cancellation and modification online. The system will then notify how much the refund the guest is eligible to receive
- Customize the booking engine color to suit your hotel brand
- A secure online payment gateway that is PCI compliant. Payment gateway options
- Email and SMS notifications, customer database to track booking list
- Booking and sales reports to track the performance
- Up-selling modules to sell your concierge services like Airport Transfer, Spa, Extra mattress, etc
Claim your Softinn Hotel Booking Engine free trial here.
SiteMinder
Siteminder Booking Engine aims to provide your guests with a frictionless and secure booking experience. It also offers a free-commission booking engine where the hotels only need to pay for the fixed monthly costs with No-Commission from the paid bookings. Voted #1 Booking Engine 2022 by HotelTechReport, below are the highlighted features offered by SiteMinder:
- Intuitive and Flexible date calendar that gives guests the ability to book multiple rooms in a single reservation
- Auto-trigger Guest Reviews on the TripAdvisor platform for guests that have completed their stay
- Extra add-on services for hotels to generate more revenues from the add-ons such as an extra mattress, room decorations, etc.
- Automate guest notifications. Users are allowed to customize guest communications and build a relationship with the guests
- Update your rates, availability, and special offers across all your systems
- Generate reports on your booking performance, trends, and sources
Claim your SiteMinder Free Trial account here.
Cloudbeds
Cloudbeds is an independent hospitality software where the Booking Engine is compatible with all property types and integrates with hotel reservation systems to keep the bookings updated in a real-time. Cloudbeds also offers a free commission booking engine where it aims to help hoteliers to collect the most booking from the hotel website.
Some of the highlighted features offered by Cloudbeds Booking Engine are:
- Supports multiple languages and currencies so you can reach more potential audiences around the world
- Customize the booking engine color that matches your hotel brand
- Support multiple rate plans with side-by-side comparison - users are able to offer various rate plans on the same room type like breakfast included or not included, early-bird rate, etc
- Access to the full reports and analytics
- Automated guest emails. The users can personalize the email to share the reservation confirmation, hotel policies, etc
Claim your free trial account with Cloubeds Booking Engine here
HoteLogix
Hotelogix is another booking engine provider that enables the free-commission aiming to help hotels in minimizing their reliance on external channels of inventory distribution like OTAs. Some of the highlighted features offered by Hotelogix Booking Engine are:
- Mobile-optimized where it allows visitors to book rooms from multiple devices
- Devise rates, and sell unlimited packages online
- Customize booking, and cancellation policies easily
- Offer add-on services online
- Display rates in multiple currencies as defined in the system
- Accept online payments via a secure payment gateway so that the guest can confirm their reservations
Want to give it a try? Simply claim your free trial account here.
Hotel Link
Hotel Link was founded in 2011 by the WHL Group and Tourism Holdings offers a user-friendly booking engine to simplify the user booking experience. Hotel Link Booking Engine enables the users to take full control of updating the room rates, inventory, promotions, etc. The highlighted features of the Hotel Link Booking Engine are:
- SMS Booking Notifications options
- Multiple Room Booking. Allowing travelers to book more than one type of room in a single booking.
- Unlimited Room Types & Rate Plans where the users can offer multiple rates for each room type
- Occupancy-Based Pricing. Allowing users to set rates depending on the number of people staying in the room
Wanted to explore? Claim the free trial account here.
Conclusion
All top 5 list of booking engines mentioned above also offers the best package with a hotel website designated exclusively for your hotel. With a hotel booking engine, it would be a perfect system to install on the hotel website and a plus point if your hotel could offer special deals like Early Booker promotions or special rate packages. This way can boost your direct sales booking and generate more leads to visit the hotel website.
If you are currently looking for tips and tricks to increase hotel direct booking, here's the free Ultimate Guide that you can refer to.
