The internet has revolutionized the hotel industry to another level (Like seriously!) Whether it is about advertising your hotel or acquiring reservations, internet or digital platforms have got your back!

Well, most of the hotels are now fairly familiar with this and are making the most of online bookings. However, there are still some hotels that rely on offline sources to get bookings. 

In this blog, we are going to discuss why you should shift your focus to online bookings instead of offline. 

Before I tell you the benefits of hotel online bookings, let me first explain to you, 

What are online bookings?

Any booking or reservation received from online sources is termed online booking. There are many sources through which hotels can get online bookings viz. website, social media pages, online travel agents (OTAs like Expedia, Booking.com, Goibibo, and likewise), metasearch engines (TripAdvisor, Trivago, Kayak, and so on), global distribution systems (GDS: Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport, etc) and even vacation rental portals (Airbnb, HomeAway, etc). 

Now, these online booking sources can be further classified into:

1. Direct online booking sources: Bookings coming from your website and social media pages are direct booking sources. There are no intermediaries between hotels and guests. For such bookings, hotels don’t have to pay commissions. 
2. Indirect online booking sources: These bookings are received from some third-party online booking platforms or aggregators. Hotels get listed on these online portals to receive bookings against a commission paid.

What are offline bookings?

Any booking that hotels received without the use of the internet is termed offline booking. 

You can consider walk-ins, phone bookings, or bookings from local travel agents as offline bookings.  

So, this was the basic definition of online and offline bookings. 

Despite the internet reaching our daily life, there are hotels that still rely on offline sources. Besides, some hotels specifically allocate certain inventory for offline bookings. (And sometimes lose potential bookings!!)

Now, let me tell you,

Why should hotels focus on online bookings instead of offline bookings?

Online booking sources make it easy for you to sell your inventories and get more reservations. Apart from this, they benefit your hotel business in the following ways:  

1. Your online reach increases 

Whenever travelers want to book a hotel, their first immediate action is to go to Google. 

They search for generic terms like- hotels in XYZ location, best hotels in XYZ hotels, cheap hotels in XYZ location, and so on.

They will get options of booking their stay from OTAs, meta-search engines, or the hotel’s own website. 

Either they will land at OTAs (or any other indirect bookings source) or on your hotel website directly. However, in both cases, your website’s reach will expand. 

Let me tell you how.

When they land at OTAs and discover your hotel there, it is not necessary for them to get convinced. To get more information about your hotel, they are definitely going to visit your hotel website.  

Thus with online bookings, your website traffic increases which will eventually enhance your hotel’s online presence. Above all, your hotel gets wider exposure to travelers worldwide. 

2. You get a higher ROI

As we have discussed earlier, there are different sources of online bookings. When you have multiple booking sources, your chances of getting the highest value bookings from all these sources increase. 

All you have to do is publish your inventories on all platforms including your website, adopt technology such as channel manager to handle the revised inventory and rate updates, and sit back and relax. 

When you publish all your inventories on maximum channels, there are very least chances that your rooms remain vacant. Basically, when you pay more attention to online sources, you will get bookings of maximum value.

Thus, you will always have a consistent inflow of revenue through some or the other booking source. 

3. Your manual efforts get reduced

The definition of offline itself states that it requires human efforts to some extent. With online booking, all these manual efforts are reduced. 

Besides, with phone and walk-in bookings, your staff has to be available round-the-clock on your premises or front desk.

On busy days (or even on regular days), it is possible that your front desk staff is not able to entertain the walk-ins and phone bookings. And there are chances that you may lose such bookings. 

To entertain such booking inquiries, you may need a dedicated receptionist. So, again those efforts are increased. (Also, consider the payroll amount of extra staff.)

Unlike phone bookings, where you have to give all the details of rooms, rate plans, and so on; in the case of online bookings, everything is available online. 

The booking and reservation from different platforms are directly fetched and further managed by the hotel software. Even the payments are processed online, so all you have to do is just focus on delivering the best guest experience. 

4. Convenient for you and your guests 

No one likes to call hotels or accommodation providers to book their stay. Believe me,

Approximately 83% of travelers book their stay online. 

Condor Ferries

When you are available online, it becomes very easy for them to find you. Your guests also appreciate the convenience of booking through desktop or mobile. (If you provide them with a responsive booking engine) 

And the best part is they can browse your services at their pace without any direct sales pressure. Further, having payment options available directly after making a reservation makes it even more attractive.

5. Round-the-clock availability 

You can sell your inventories 24*7 without any extra resources invested. Through the online platforms, your guests can book with you anytime, anywhere. 

So, online bookings are truly a boon to hotels. Moving further let’s see, 

How can you shift your focus to online bookings?

Now that you know why having more online bookings is beneficial, let me tell you how you can get more of them:

1. Get listed on maximum OTAs

To acquire more online bookings, you might have listed a few OTAs. And of course, you might be doing great on them. But do you know, getting listed on maximum OTAs and metasearch engines can drive you more bookings and revenue?

Basically, OTAs increase your hotel’s credibility, promote your hotel, and you can expand your reach to a wider audience. Here are more benefits to having more OTA connections for your hotel.

Beyond that, to increase your online bookings, you can also be a part of the promotions that OTAs run on their end. (Different OTAs have different techniques to get you bookings.)

Here, I would suggest that you shouldn’t get listed on any random OTAs. Select the OTAs as per your location, property type, and OTAs that fall into your budget. 

Also, don’t miss out on getting listed on Google MyBusiness. 

 Must-read: How to select the right OTAs for your hotel?

2. Adopt a uniform distribution method

Besides selecting the right OTAs, it is very important to select the right distribution method as well.

Many hotels still practice the traditional allocated inventory distribution method, where they allocate a fixed inventory to a particular channel. (For example, out of 20 rooms, they will allocate 15 rooms to OTAs and leave the rest of rooms for offline bookings)

In this way, you may lose potential booking opportunities. 

Instead, you should apply a uniform inventory distribution method and list all your inventories on all channels. As a result, you get bookings from all the possible channels and your inventory is utilized to the fullest. 

PROTIP: Use technology like channel manager to practice this method effectively.

We have an in-depth guide to help you get the best channel manager. Do refer to that.

3. Put efforts to increase direct bookings

Undoubtedly, OTAs play an important role in getting more bookings. But there’s no harm in putting effort to get commission-free bookings. Isn’t it? 

All you have to do is, get a booking engine integrated with your hotel website, that is capable of converting your website visitors into bookers. 

There are several ways to increase direct bookings through your website. You can keep attractive CTAs, improve your website loading speed, run promotions, and so on. Also, explore

Must-read: 15 Ways to Increase Direct Bookings on Your Hotel Website

4. Optimize your social media pages

Having 3/4th of the globe on social media, it is very necessary for you to BE THERE. 

Well, these days hotels get bookings from social media platforms too. So that’s another reason your business should be on these social media platforms. 

Besides, just having accounts is not enough, you have to be really active on them. You should interlink your social media pages. Moreover, You should also see if all the corporate information is listed correctly on each and every social media platform.

Now, it is not necessary that you post every day. But the frequency at which you are posting should be constant.

Let’s say you are posting every alternate day, then it should remain consistent throughout.

Here are: 9 Simple Steps to do Social Media Marketing for Hotels in 2020

5. Get your hands on hotel digital marketing

As you know, your audience searches for you on digital platforms only. Therefore, you need to have a STRONG ONLINE PRESENCE. 

Well, with digital marketing strategies you can have a remarkable digital identity for your hotel. Moreover, they improve the conversion rate of your website and get you more bookings. 

You can try the following digital marketing strategies to enhance your online presence and get more bookings:

1. Interact via social media and videos 
2. Advertise on OTAs and metasearch engines
3. Start influencer marketing
4. Run online ads
5. Strengthen email marketing
6. Do regular blogging on your website

You can explore these strategies in detail here. 

6. Manage your reviews

The first thing guests check before visiting a hotel is its reviews. With the increasing number of online platforms, guests often communicate and interact online to share the experience they had.

That’s why hotels these days need to focus on their hotel reviews and reputation. You see, customer ratings affect hotel revenue too.

You may ask how? 

Well, today people can search and find all the travel and hotel information provided by different sites. Let’s take TripAdvisor for example. TripAdvisor provides information and reviews written by the guests about the particular hotel and its services.

And this ultimately influences the guest’s final decision to book a hotel. This way, hotel reviews have a greater impact on the current and future guests that you may welcome at your hotel.

Thus, it is necessary for you to respond to all the reviews (especially, the negative ones). You can utilize our free and ready-to-use review response templates to regulate your review management.

7. Be visible on search engines

The use of search engines has become the primary source of gathering information as travelers are excessively using the internet to plan their trips.

Search engines have over 1 billion users. 

An “SEO-ready” website will get plenty of visits as it will be prominently placed on search engine results whenever there’s a related query. Just imagine how many bookings you’ll get online if your hotel is listed at least on the first page. 

You may ask, But how to SEO optimize my hotel website?

Well, it is not rocket science! We have a guaranteed solution for that too – A Complete Guide on SEO for hotels for 2020 [FREE Checklist Inside]

Besides, to acquire significant online bookings you need to have a strong online presence. But how’d you measured your hotel’s online presence? Here’s a way out:

Download this FREE handbook of 40+ parameters to measure your hotel's online presence. 

8. Enrol Yourself in Google Free Hotel Booking Links

From the get-go, Google hotel search has been crucial for hotels worldwide. And now the search giant is offering much more to the industry.

Google has recently rolled out its free hotel booking links program for hotels around the world to appear. Meaning, hotels can now display their direct booking rates and availability on Google Hotel (Meta) Search and Google Maps.

All of it, FOR FREE!

It’s highly recommended that hotels should enroll themselves in this program. And if you want to know how to enroll for google FBL, click here.

Conclusion

So, these are some of the ways through which you can get more online bookings. 

The Internet which used to be a luxury has become a necessity for business. Thus, online bookings are going to be the ONLY booking type in the future. 

Right now, if you will focus on online bookings, then you are definitely going to hit a home run in the future. 

You can start with these strategies to increase online bookings. In case, if you are facing any difficulty following the steps, you can tell us in the comment section. 

Tell us which strategies you like the most and which you are going to use immediately to focus on your online bookings. Also, tell us if you are using any strategy and I missed mentioning it in this blog.

The post 5 Reasons Hotels Should Focus on Online Bookings appeared first on eZee Absolute.