6 Major Ways to Increase Direct Booking for Your Hotel Business

Posted by OneClick IT Consultancy on September 22nd, 2021

Nowadays running a successful hotel business is challenging as the global hotel industry has been affected badly due to COVID-19. By the end of July OR - Occupancy Rates of most traveled countries were 60%, 48% and 32% for China, the US and Italy respectively.

The drastic change in your hotel revenue is somewhat disturbing. Additionally, increasing direct booking for your hotel is a team effort with various kinds of activities which leads to the desired outcomes. 

In this blog, we will guide our audience with 5 top metrics and 6 growth hacking techniques to increase your direct bookings through a hotel booking engine. 

What are direct bookings from the terms of the hotel industry?

In direct bookings, guests make reservations directly with a hotel or the property without the involvement of any 3rd party vendors or travel agents. Direct bookings are favorable because they directly connect guests to their destination and saves the cost of commissions.  Normally direct bookings are done in three ways:

• From the hotel’s website

• Through phone/email 

• Walk-in guests

Direct bookings play a vital role in creating a powerful brand and loyalty. However direct booking has become important for any hotelier. There is no offense for third-party bookings, but somehow it is about the cost of revenue and profit you get from different types of hotel bookings. 

Statistics for Direct Bookings through Hotel Booking Engine

As per the research of Travel Weekly in 2019, the direct bookings ratio was around 49% of U.S. hotels, and by 2022, direct hotel bookings will grow to a 50% share.

Let’s Explore 6 Essential Ways to Increase Your Hotel Direct Bookings

1. User-friendly Website:

First and foremost, develop a user-friendly website or turn it into one. The webste which you develop should be accessible on all the devices from mobile to tablets. Higher the user-friendly website = opportunity to acquire direct bookings. 

Mug up one thing, whenever any visitor will visit your website the first page he/she will visit is the homepage. Give the stunning information as much as you can. Add your unique services or add some exclusive offers and promo to convert website users into the guest.

2. Integrate Hotel Booking Engine:

Congratulations you made your website responsive. Now it’s time to add a hotel booking engine to the website.

Just having the website is not enough. You need to add a booking engine which will help your users to book directly from the website.

3. Its time to Showcase – Digital Marketing:

This place will amplify direct sales but in a bit tricky way. By using your website you can list your travel portal in MakeMyTrip, TripAdvisor, Agoda, etc. 

You can also start your own marketing campaigns with customized marketing strategies. Start analyzing your property management services, take feedback and review from the guests on social media. Turn on your targeted audience offers as a test to know what works for you.

4. Is Your Website Ranking?

The Website is done, the hotel booking engine is developed, and marketing campaigns have started.

So now what is next?

As you know, your visitors are exploring your hotel property through search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. To know exactly where your visitors are visiting your website, you need to conduct SEO - Search Engine Optimization of your hotel website.

SEO includes various services in its process:

• Link Building

• Optimize Page Contents

• Targeted Audiences

Moreover, you need to maintain the loading speed of the website. No one likes a website that keeps loading for ten seconds.

5. Create your Profile on Social Media Platforms:

Social media is the scrolling hub for every age group. Make sure that after developing a successful website you will start promoting your business on social media platforms.

Start creating content on social media channels with your own “hashtags”. Build interesting corners to encourage your page visitors to share your photos.  Ask for feedback from your guest on social media channels and make some exclusive packages only for your followers. 

6. Go for Live ChatBot:

There are thousands of websites available and visitors have chosen to land on your website, then give them as much support as possible.

While users are visiting your website, users might have some queries and they would prefer to ask you and they want an instant answer. If they don’t get then they might leave, so for that you have the best option to integrate a live chatbot. 

The chatbot will answer the questions in a fraction of seconds, and most importantly, it works 24*7.

Here are the Top 5 Secret Metrics Which is Important for Your Hotel Business:

Your work does not t end here, after developing a website. There are few necessary metrics you need to know from the customer perspective. Let’s have a look at metrics with the calculations.

1. Rooms Available: Total number of rooms = Rooms available + number of days

2. ARI (Average Rate Index): ARI = Average Daily Rate (ADR) / Market Average Daily Rate (ADR)

3. Direct Revenue Ratio: DRR = Percentage of Total Direct Revenue/3rd Party Commission

4. Website Conversion Rate: WCR = Website Visitors/Bookings 

5. Marketing Cost for Per Booking: MCPB = Market Channel - Total Booking Amount

Final Wording

Are you looking for a 360-degree travel technology solution for your travel business? You are at the right place. OneClick is a top leading hotel booking engine development company around the world. Our top travel experts have developed 200+ travel portals for various clients such as B2B, B2C, B2B2B, B2B2C and a few more to increase their profit and make their business more successful for their potential customers.  

Did you find the way, or else do you need some guidance? Then let us know, and we are always happy to serve our customers.