No, there are no ghost chefs involved. Okay, that was a lame joke. Never mind!

While the trend seems to be intriguing, what’s more interesting is the fact that ghost kitchens and hotels are now working together.

Sounds weird? Exciting?

I know it’s a little difficult to make sense out of this at first. But, when you dig a little deeper, the business opportunities (for both hotels and ghost kitchens) are immense. 

This article is going to be all about this peculiar yet intriguing collaboration between accommodation providers and ghost kitchens.

What is a Ghost Kitchen?

Ghost kitchen, also known as cloud kitchen, is a food preparation facility for deliver-only meals. To put it simply, there’s nothing called dine-in or takeout, customers order their food and get it delivered to their doorsteps.

Note: Some cloud kitchens do offer takeout meals and drive-through; however, that’s not something common.

The Rise of Ghost Kitchens

Food delivery has always been one of those industries that people love.

I mean who doesn’t want their food to reach them while they watch their favourite show on TV.

Because of that, the hospitality industry witnessed more and more players entering this segment. Additionally, it has also gone through massive growth and rapid technological advancements.

This was a major push that brought cloud kitchens into the picture.

Next up, the Covid-19 pandemic happened and it flipped the hotels and restaurants. Hotels couldn’t make any profit from their on-site restaurants and most of them sat vacantly.

So, what could hoteliers do? Rent out the space? Well, that sounds good!

But to whom?

What if hotels rent out the space to someone who could benefit the hotel in various other aspects?

That’s where everything changed.

Hoteliers became strategic and re-thought their business module.

Further, it’s not just properties but cloud kitchens have also marked their spot in the industry.

Even during those critical covid circumstances, ghost kitchens were able to sustain; rather, stay profitable.

But how?

Even before the pandemic, almost everything started happening online. In terms of restaurants, there was a substantial shift in demand; from dining-in towards home-delivered food. Not just demand, but even government restrictions played a role in this shift.

Meaning, this entire shebang provided a great opportunity to anyone having a kitchen facility to sell their food. Further, cloud kitchens are easier to start and run, because of low entry costs and capital expenditure.

How Can Hotels Benefit From This Collaboration?

The pandemic has not only ushered in the growth of cloud kitchens but has also started a new collaboration trend where ghost kitchens and hotels work together. And surprisingly, it’s becoming beneficial for hotels.

Rent out underutilized hotel rooms, kitchens, and tools

What are the things that a cloud kitchen needs and hotels have? I think you’ve probably understood what I am trying to say.

For example:

Hotel Roy was badly hit by the pandemic in 2020. To revive and sustain, the hotel owner decided to go with cost-cutting by shutting the in-house restaurant.

In December 2020, hotel Roy was approached by a cloud kitchen named Delicacy that wanted to rent the kitchen.

Today, it’s been more than a year and hotel Roy is still working with Delicacy. And guess what? The hotel is getting monthly rent from its unutilised kitchen and even rented a room to use as a storeroom.

“It’s all about repurposing underutilised spaces.”

Do away with the need of having an in-house restaurant

If hotels become adept at repurposing their spaces, they can certainly have a good amount of money flowing in and do away with aspects that aren’t prominent.

No doubt, in-house restaurants are supremely critical, but there are ways a hotel can tweak it around.

Let me stretch the above example to explain this part better.

Hotel Roy could see how quickly Delicacy became profitable with their rented kitchen and room. So, the hotel came up with a partnership idea.

Hotel Roy offered the cloud kitchen to become their in-house restaurant/food partner.

How would this work?

The hotel has set up a food ordering counter along with a few seating arrangements. Every time the hotel receives an order, it would pass it on to the cloud kitchen. They would get the order prepared and the hotel staff would serve it to the guests.

This is clever hoteliering. Period.

Get a better opportunity to upsell

Letting a ghost kitchen operate on and from your hotel opens up a lot of opportunities for upselling.

How about creating an exclusive menu for in-room dining? You can strategically create that menu to drive more sales.

You take the order and fulfil it with the help of the ghost kitchen. You can pay the kitchen their cut and keep your profit.

Furthermore, you can also curate packages where you include certain meals.

There are various ways for upselling when you are partnered with a cloud kitchen. You just need to know the right strategies to pull things off.

Can offer better room service to guests

Cloud kitchens usually have less hustle and bustle compared to conventional hotel restaurants. Because they are all dependent on orders coming in for delivery.  

Meaning, when you join forces with the ghost kitchen, they have that time to prepare the meal for your guests and you can always fulfil room service orders on time.

Not just that, the quality of food is also better because of the same reason.

Therefore, you’ll be able to deliver a better guest experience.

What’s in it for Ghost Kitchens?

The collaboration between ghost kitchens and hotels are, hands down, beneficial for hotels; that too at a greater level.

But what about ghost kitchens? Are there any advantages on offer for them?

The answer is a YES!!!

The virtual restaurant ecosystem is evolving at a speed you can only think of. It’s not just the trends but strategies are changing too. And the latest is certainly the one where virtual kitchens work with hotels or under their infrastructure.

Get a better infrastructure at a reasonable price

If you’re planning to start a ghost kitchen, the cooking facility itself is going to need a lot of investment.

You have two choices here; wait, three choices. Either set up a facility, rent an existing professional kitchen, or use your home kitchen (which is certainly not feasible).

If you ask me, I highly suggest you go with the second option. Yes, I have valid reasons too.

As most hotels’ in-house restaurants are under loss and spaces are vacant, the chances are more that you’ll be able to crack a better rent deal. Not just that, you’ll have a proper cooking facility with all the advanced equipment.

Can serve a wider customer base

Another benefit of running a ghost kitchen out of a hotel is that you get to serve a wider customer base. Meaning, your order not only comes from people residing in the locality but also from guests staying in the hotel.

If you have a strategic partnership with the hotel, you can pull this off exactly the way you’re thinking right now.

Now, if you do it successfully and for a good amount of time, this is not just about serving more customers but also about scaling your business.

You can slowly reach out to more and more hotels and start your cooking facilities.

May Get a Helping Hand from the Hotel Staff

Now, this is not a sure-shot advantage; but it might happen if you share a good rapport with the hotel.

There are times when you might not have enough people to deliver in-room dine orders or fulfil room service orders. And during these kinds of scenarios, the hotel can offer you a helping hand by letting some of its staff help you fulfil orders.

Not just that. There are various ways the hotel staff can take that extra mile to support your business. Be it helping you sort your inventory, bring you orders, or cleaning (sometimes at a price).

FAQs

The post The Latest Hospitality Collaboration: Ghost Kitchens x Hotels appeared first on eZee Absolute.

For hoteliers, the question always arises whether; do you really need to have OTA connections for your property, or should you just rely on direct bookings. However, the emerging trends in the hospitality industry have seen a revolution with the upcoming online booking sites. 

Additionally, if we take the online market share into consideration, then

Expedia covers up to approx 28%, while Priceline and Booking.com have a share of up to 16% and 19% respectively.

Qloapps

OTAs, thus, have become a source of easy marketing for hoteliers. As they allow hotel rooms to be sold to a larger audience and gain higher revenue. However, this can be done optimally by taking effective steps to improve OTA rankings, and of course, by selecting the right OTAs for your property.

Let’s have a detailed look at it:

What is OTA ranking?

An OTA ranking is a way of ranking properties based on the quality and completeness of their text and visual content. These scores are used by OTAs to rank properties on various attributes like:

1. Photos and text descriptions
2. Reviews
3. Commission
4. Conversion 
5. Quality of their content 

Also, several OTAs allow hoteliers to log in and check their property rank to know and improve them better.

To add on, a higher content score for a property means it has a greater potential to rank better in search results on OTAs. So, it is important to do what you can to DRIVE UP YOUR SCORE. 

Tip: One of the easiest ways to rank better is by improving your content quality.

Why is it important to improve OTA rankings?

With time and growing competition, OTA rankings have become more important than ever. OTAs always see to it that their users have a great experience on their sites, and compel them to make bookings ASAP.

As facts stand, over 2/3rd of the total online bookings are controlled by OTAs.

Hospitality Net

Moreover, OTAs also consider various parameters mentioned above to promote any property. For OTAs now, quality holds a higher importance than quantity.

Thereby, you need to have a solid presence on OTAs. This helps you to get more worldwide visibility as well as increases your bookings and revenue.

So, it is VERY IMPORTANT to improve your rankings as the OTAs push customers to properties with better reputations.

You may like to download: FREE handbook of 40+ parameters to measure your hotel's online presence. 

How can you improve OTA rankings?

Every hotel business is always on a lookout to improve its performance, whether offline or online. Improving OTA rankings is also a subset of that.

However, you need to primarily focus on having the RIGHT DISTRIBUTION of the rooms, at the right prices to SELL the right room to your guests. 

Check out a quick video here on improving OTA ranking.

Important: One factor that doesn’t vary while improving your OTA rankings is the CONVERSION RATE. If your property converts often then its rank would naturally be higher. This is because booking platforms want their customers to find what they want and find it fast. And so, such properties are always rewarded with higher positions. 

Moving ahead, let’s have a look at how to increase your ranking on OTAs:

Step ZERO: Select the right OTAs 

Consider this as a prerequisite!!

There are multiple numbers of OTAs available in the market today and, each of them works on a different booking model. Hence, it is vital that you just don’t register on any random OTA but select the ones that are actually RIGHT for your property.

Furthermore, limiting yourself to fewer OTAs gives you fixed online visibility; thus losing several booking opportunities for you. So, always consider listing your hotel on MORE THAN 8 OTAs.

What you should do to select the right OTA?

While selecting an OTA, keep in mind about your target audience, property type, commission model, OTAs demographic reach, etc. To explore more on this refer to our guide on how to select the RIGHT OTAs for your hotel.

Also, consider updating these the same on all OTAs – total rooms, star rating, room types, cancellation policy, check-in and check-out time to avoid any disparity. 

1. Keep your listing and content up-to-date

OTAs will not show incomplete listings to its users. Also, if the content hasn’t been updated in a while, or the photos are terrible, or if room types are not similar then the OTA penalizes such hoteliers. This can create confusion among your guests and hamper their experience.

Hence, the better your listings are updated the more likely it is for you to receive more bookings and improve your OTA rankings.

What you should do?

To keep your listing and content up-to-date:

• Make sure that you update fresh content as well as listings on your connected OTAs.
• Always consider the end-user experience when updating any detailed content to your channels.
• Do think about how you can adjust and put your property in the best light if someone is searching for your hotel. 

2. Post HD photos and videos 

Photos and videos act as “social proof” for your guests!!

High-quality pictures on OTAs will provide your guests with a 360-degree virtual tour of your hotel. And, will give them a clear idea about your hotel’s location as well as the environment. 

Also, posting good quality videos will help your guests in exploring your hotel more, thus resulting in faster bookings. 

What you should do?

Improve your rankings and quality score by posting photos and videos of your hotel’s exterior, interior as well as your location.

For this, 

• Ideally, you should add MORE THAN 25 pictures of your hotel on all the OTAs.
• Of which, do consider adding at least 4 high-quality pictures per room.

3. Collect reviews and respond to them 

Positive review responded lately or no response to a negative review is often seen in a bad light. So, whether it is a negative or a positive review make sure that you reply to it on time 

You can easily collect, track, reply and analyze such reviews you get from all sites at a single place using eZee’s Reputation Management System.

What you should do?

MAKE SURE you actively reply to all reviews received on any OTA in order to gain more trust of your guests. Also, 

• Consider approaching your guests for reviews. 
• Regularly respond to reviews you get on TripAdvisor, Booking.com and more.

Having trouble doing so? Start responding to your guests faster with our hotel review response templates! 

4. Maintain rate parity

Rate parity is another very important factor. OTAs determine this by comparing your hotel rates mentioned on their site with other OTAs as well as with the competing hotels to determine your ideal rankings. 

However, not keeping the same rates on all OTAs affects your OTA rankings. Not doing so can get you warnings, or ban notice, or discontinue your listing forever from the OTAs.

What you should do?

Don’t risk disciplinary actions from your most important OTA distribution channels. Always follow your agreements, and have clear differentiation for the rates that you offer. Lastly, maitain effective rate parity to improve rankings and get more bookings.

5. Reduce cancellation ratio (%)

Devise a proper and fool-proof cancellation policy before rolling out your availability on various channels. Be careful while forming your cancellation policies. 

Try not to be over flexible as well as ultra-strict with it. This will help you to improvise on your policies, get more confirmed bookings from the OTAs as well as reduce your cancellation ratio.

What you should do?

COLLECT and ANALYZE the reasons for cancellation from your guests. Also, find when you get those cancellations. Is it done just before their arrival, or days before that, or is it from the third-party’s end, or is it because of overbooking? 

Do apply tactics to reduce your last-minute cancellations for maintaining consistency in the bookings you receive and enhance your room occupancy. 

6. Work with your market manager

OTAs usually assign market managers to get more bookings for your hotel. The market managers have a wealth of information and can really help you in planning your online strategies. 

Remember as they work with a wide range of hotels they know what is and isn’t working. So, they’ll often

• Update you on the latest trends in your region.
• Make sure that you offer travel packages that target your preferred audiences.
• Help you with paid advertising campaigns between your hotel and the OTA. 

What you should do?

Study says, bookings go to hotels mentioned on the first two pages. So, seek to meet with your market managers regularly to figure out the best way to accomplish goals.

MAKE SURE you keep open lines of communication with your market managers; since they are constantly aware of booking patterns and trends within your market.

7. Participate in OTA promotions

OTAs often run deals, offers, promotions, loyalty or reward programs to promote the hotels. Taking part in these will help in increasing your bookings as well as improve OTA rankings.

Offering discounts and free items on OTAs will make your property more preferable over your competitors and help you to upsell your extra services as well as amenities. 

What you should do?

Run effective deals and regular promotions on the OTAs to increase the number of bookings. Make sure your promotional structure is set-up well and you keep a check on it. Do offer promotions per booking, or a free night, or on a group booking, etc that draws guest’s attention. 

8. Paid advertising

Customers often prefer going directly to OTAs to compare hotels, read guest reviews, and accordingly do the booking. So, advertising on such OTA sites can help you to easily gain more bookings and thereby boost ranking. 

For example: When someone searches XYZ Hotel in Google, the result is headed to the OTA ads that they buy from Google. The OTAs charge commissions to these hotels or sometimes run ads on their own with the idea to get ahead of hotels’ website offers.

What you should do?

DO consider paid advertising for your property to see a rise in revenue as well as your OTA ranking. Also, improve your hotel marketing with these paid ads by reaching out to a larger target audience. 

Study says, Booking.com is the biggest spender on paid search advertising (effectively Google ads), while TripAdvisor takes the top spot for organic search. 

9. Competition analysis

It is important to know your hotel competitors in the market. This will keep you informed that you aren’t underselling or overselling any rooms.

Also, being aware of their activity may provide you an opportunity to catch up extra bookings on OTAs and improve rankings. 

For example: If your competitors have received a good amount of bookings or fewer bookings then; they’ll obviously increase or decrease their room rates. So, changing rates on OTAs could indicate the occupancy of your competitor.

Additionally, opt for an ideal way to monitor your competitors through a rate shopper tool.

What you should do?

Reach out to your local travel agents or agencies, tour operators, event organizers, and other business partners with whom your competitors may deal with.

Furthermore, Google is the best option. Simply search for ‘hotels in your location’. You will get details of hotels that appear in the search results along with your hotel. Start comparing this with your OTA channels as well!

10. Considering getting into the preferred partner agreement

Through a preferred partner agreement, an OTA will rank your hotel better in return for a higher commission. Now you’ll think of paying more commissions, right? But, understand that this is just a short-term strategy only. 

Preferred partners get an average of up to 65% more page views and 35% more bookings.

By doing so, your goal should be to get on to page 1 or 2 of an OTA, so that the long-term benefits can far outweigh the short-term costs. Once you increase your conversions, you can pull back on your commission rate as by then, your hotel will organically increase its OTA rankings.

NOTE: Properties with an average rating score of 7.0 or higher are categorized as “preferred” and get extra visibility in the search results, next to a ‘thumbs-up’ sign. Booking.com’s Preferred Partner program is one such established approach to boost visibility.

What you should do?

Give your hotel a unique push towards better visibility and bookings with the preferred partner agreement. Allow a larger number of customers to easily see that your property is recommended and is booked by many travellers.

Such programs are an added advantage when listing your property on OTAs and should be taken into account when selecting the right mix. 

11. Keep your inventory bookable

A well-structured inventory distribution strategy is the key to selling more rooms. Not only that, but it also helps the hotel to increase its online visibility. 

Keeping your inventory open on OTAs will get you advance bookings and even improve your rankings on the OTAs. 

For example: If a guest plans to book a hotel that he would be visiting say after 3 months. Then in such a case, if your hotels’ inventory is not bookable you would naturally lose the booking. 

So, keeping your inventory bookable this benefits the guests who prefer to book well in advance as well as increases your hotel occupancy.

What you should do?

Keep your hotel’s inventory open for the next 12-24 months. This will rank you better and get more bookings comparatively. Additionally, receiving a good amount of advanced bookings will also help you to plan for better pricing strategies for the upcoming inventories that are available.

Want a reality check on your hotel’s business performance based on the various ways mentioned above? Get it reviewed here with a FREE Hotel Audit Report!

FAQs

Let me answer a few of your questions that might arise in relation to this blog:

The post How Can Hotels Improve OTA Rankings? [11 Sureshot Ways] appeared first on eZee Absolute.