One of the major defects of many hotel booking engines compared to the OTAs is their inability to be adapted to the flexibility demanded by both the hotels and their guests.
OTAs are aware of the importance of responding to the guests’ needs and always go the extra mile to meet them. Your website and your booking engine should do the same.
Don’t create barriers between your guests and the “Complete Reservation” Button.
You must be loyal to the “minimum clicks” philosophy, which dictates that you have to eliminate the actions that a user must make from the time that he searches for availability until the time he completes the reservation. So, after the initial search, you should avoid requesting for more information than is actually needed by the hotel.
A lot of hotels need to increase their revenue by selling additional services during the booking procedure. Cross-selling your hotel’s services is a great idea. Selling services or products of third parties (air-tickets, car rental, etc.) is a conversion killer!
Don’t set restrictions that will reduce the choices that your bookers have. If you can’t support their request, then they will definitely choose an OTA to complete their booking.
So, if they are willing to make a multi-room booking, you must be able to accept any available combination that they may need. For example, they may want to book one double room with breakfast taking advantage of your non-refundable discount and a single room full board at the standard rate.
Make sure that you are able to handle their requests and that you don’t build frontiers in your booking procedure.
When guests visit the OTA websites, they are provided with the room rates in their own currency. During their search for best rates, they compare rates in their own currency. If your booking engine doesn’t provide them this option, then most probably they won’t bother calculating exchange rates and they will book through an OTA, even if your own rates are better.
Do your search and find the best hotel booking engine that will better support your direct bookings quest. Make sure that you have a simple and easy reservations procedure that will increase your hotel’s direct bookings.
The Bookwize Booking System provides you with a great reservation journey, through a state-of-the-art user experience, that aims to maximize your hotel’s direct reservations.