What is a direct booking website?
A direct booking website is a website that is owned and operated (in this case) by your hotel. With the implementation of a booking engine, guests can book directly on your website without the need for a third party. This provides a streamlined booking experience for guests, and for hotels, while increasing revenue due to not having to pay commission fees.
Why hotels should invest in a direct booking website
There are many reasons to invest in a direct booking website, including boosting your own brand, being able to create better guest relationships, having improved customer insights, reducing reliance on third parties, and lowering your overall costs.
Boost your brand
By working with direct channels, you can ensure your branding is consistent across conversion points. Even if you are using an external booking engine, you can ensure its branded so that guests can feel assured that they are booking from a reliable site. You can control the look and feel and messaging and adapt to each target audience.
Build stronger guest relationships
One of the best things about direct bookings is that you can control the whole guest relationship from the time they book, to the pre-arrival emails, the communications they receive during their stay and even manage loyalty strategies. This ensures that you can build a stronger rapport with your guests, fostering trust and loyalty so that they are more likely to come back. On the contrary, when guests book through a third party, you don’t have this same level of control.
Get a better grasp on customer data
Analytics and data are key to hoteliers’ decision-making process. By having access to direct booking data, you can collect it and use it in real-time to adapt your personalization and marketing efforts throughout the customer journey. You can also leverage this customer data to spot trends and opportunities across pricing, promotions, services and more to further drive your business development.
Reduce your reliance on third parties
It’s never a good idea to be overly reliant on any one singular booking source because that means if it were to fail you, you would lose your bookings. Diversification is key, and by reducing your dependence on OTAs or other third parties, you can also cut back on commissions and invest those savings into your own direct channels.
Reduce your costs
You can also cut down on those hefty online travel agency (OTA) commissions and put the savings to better use. Pass them on to your guests with lower prices, or use them to create exclusive discounts, packages, or loyalty rewards - things you can’t always do through an OTA.
How to create an effective direct booking website?
For starters, you will want to create a website if you don’t already have one where you can install your booking engine (hint: the Mews Booking Engine is a great one). Once your website and booking engine have been installed, you’ll want to opt for a channel manager that allows you to better manage your inventory across all distribution channels.
Promote your direct booking website
It’s no good having a sparkly and seamless direct booking website if nobody knows about it. Here are some of the best ways you can promote it.
Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a strategy that consists of consistently creating content optimized for search engines, which responds to the things that potential guests are searching for. Make sure each static page is optimized for a particular keyword and then create regular content on your blog that targets specific keywords that are of interest for your hotel and for users.
Don’t neglect Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM is another activity that is crucial for boosting your direct bookings. You can bid on keywords to be strategically placed on Google when guests are searching for things related to your hotel, with the final target link going to your direct booking website. Google Ads (and social media ads) will be a worthwhile investment for your property.
Leverage relevant social media platforms
Social media is also a great way to promote your direct booking website. You can engage potential clients both on your own and with the help of influencers, creating exciting content that helps position your hotel as the place to be. Whether you work with micro-influencers by offering a free night’s stay in exchange for promotion or partner with macro-influencers to create a buzz with paid collaborations and organized activities, both approaches can help position your hotel as the ultimate destination.
Create exclusive direct offers
Once you’ve gone through all the trouble to promote direct bookings, then it’s time to create exclusive offers that can only be accessed by booking directly. These special offers can be promoted on your website, social media, and you may even consider creating a landing page for search engine ads, exclusively designed to capture these clients.
Optimize your website for conversions
Optimizing your website for conversions is another key step to promote direct bookings. You can do this by having simplified navigation, making sure your website loads quickly and is free from heavy JavaScript, optimizing your call to actions with clear language and strategic placement, among other strategies that encourage guests to go all the way.
It’s also a good idea to make sure your website is optimized for mobile bookings as many guests will be booking on the go, and this way you don’t avoid losing them due to your website not being mobile-friendly. Ensure that all content is compelling and clearly demonstrates how your hotel is the solution to their booking dilemma. If you’re not sure what will work, consider doing A/B testing to see which CTAs work better, and test headlines and content layout.
One of the most important steps to optimizing for conversion is to ensure a frictionless booking process to avoid website abandonment. Make sure only the necessary form fields are mandatory and give options to sign in easily using their social accounts, which they are likely already logged into. To reduce anxiety about when the process will be over, consider using progress indicators.
Conclusion
Direct booking websites are without a doubt important for hotels to diversify their revenue streams and boost profitability. They give you control over pricing, strengthen guest engagement, and let you offer special deals without losing revenue. Plus, as you’ve seen, they’re a smart way to reduce reliance on OTAs - and cut costs in the process.
By making the most of your direct channels, you set your hotel up for long-term success, building loyalty and driving revenue growth over time.
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