6 BookOnlineNow tips on how to increase your direct bookings in 2020
As the new year has arrived, it is now the perfect time for you to make a fresh start, rethink of your hotel marketing strategies and set your 2020 business goals.
BookonlineNow has gathered for you the most up-to-date strategies and tactics in order to maximize your direct bookings and see your revenue growing up.
1.Choose the right Booking Engine
The first step in order to increase direct bookings and maximize your revenue is to choose the right Booking Engine for your website. OTAs (eg. Booking,Expedia etc) are inevitably a way to promote your rooms and secure some bookings. However, the commission you are forced to pay definitely diminishes your net profit. Thanks to the low commission a Booking Engine charges, it allows you to decide the rate you want to charge and receive directly the payment for the reservations.
Integrating a user-friendly Booking Engine will attract the client and force them to book their stay through it. A Booking Engine must have the following characteristics:
- Simple and fast reservation process
- Multi-currency
- Multi-lingual
- Rich in photos
- Promotional codes
- Easy and secure online payment
- Mobile Friendly
2.Enable Online Payment
When using a Booking Engine you definitely want to be sure that once the reservation is made you will directly receive your money in your bank account. BookOnlineNow has now launched Online Payment Suite which is a complete solution for managing online payments with just “one-click”. Via a Payment Gateway hoteliers can control both the reservations coming from their booking engine and their OTAs.
3.Offer a mobile-friendly experience
Nowadays, that more of 80% of the population own a mobile phone, a key to ensure clients’ bookings is to offer your clients a mobile-friendly booking experience. The legible font, the concise content, the easy navigation without scrolling and zoom-in and the specific design are only some of the characteristics that will make the booking process easier and efficient.
4.Promote the best deals and packages through your website
A secure way to maximize direct bookings is to ensure the visitors of your webpage that the rates and offers found here are the best they can find online. If your question is how can I promote my Booking Engine as the most value-for-money reservation way the answer lies between:
- Pop-up ads informing the guests that through the website they can find the best online prices and promoting them your special offers
- Promote the advantages of your hotel in your homepage: in order to keep the guest navigating through it
- Give special offers to guests: if they book online clients can take advantage of special offers like free activities (eg. massage, dinner) or discounted rental prices(eg. Pay 3 nights instead of 4, discounted weekends )
- Provide some inclusive extra services: While booking an overall of 15% of guests is estimated to purchase an extra. Some ideas of extras could be transportation services, special services, gifts or tours and activities.
- Rewards direct bookings with free gifts: Some additional promotional tactics to ensure visitors will book directly through your website is to offer them for free some services like breakfast buffet, early check-in, free parking among others.
5.Create loyalty with your clients
Once a customer makes a booking he/she is directly considered as a member of the hotel. One of the most important techniques that lead to a direct booking is the existence of loyalty programs for the repeated clients of a hotel. BON Loyalty Suite rewards program is a way to say thank you to loyal guests, while also giving them an incentive to book their next trip by offering them special prices, extra services, free gifts depending on the “level” of their loyalty.
6.Be connected with meta-search
In our days metasearch has become a strong player in hospitality industry. A metasearch basically compares rates from various online travel agencies(OTAs) all in one place. When clients check the prices on a metasearch and find a deal they like, with just one click they are taken to the page of the original source(an OTA or the hotel website) in order to complete their booking. Since our goal is to maximize direct bookings it is highly advisable that the Booking Engine we use is connected with these metasearch pages. BookonlineNow Booking Engine is now connected with Google Hotel Ads, Trivago and Tripadvisor.
