And if he has a hotel website; chances are, he’s already taking steps to acquire bookings from there.

However, most of the hotels strive to rank above the OTAs in the search engines. Such that, visitors hardly reach the hotel website; let alone make a booking from there.

So, in this blog; I’m going to talk about some great ways to increase direct hotel bookings on your website; including steps to make your website visible OVER the OTAs in search results.

Let’s start from the scratch.

What are direct bookings in hotel industry?

The bookings made at your property without involvement of any third-party website or person, are termed as direct bookings. 

Since these are commission-free (and of course more profitable) bookings, naturally any hotelier would wish to acquire more of them. 

And if we look at the facts,

Nearly two-thirds of guests prefer to book direct with hotels.

Triptease

Having said that, if you’ve not started focusing on this aspect of hotel management, you should START doing this right away.

In this blog, I am giving you 14 assured strategies to increase direct hotel bookings:

There are two mediums through which you can increase direct bookings:

1. Your website
2. Other platforms

Let’s first see, 

How to increase direct hotel bookings from your website?

Your website is the face of your hotel brand, therefore it has to be excellently developed. Here’s how you can drive maximum bookings from your website:

1. Have a mobile-friendly hotel website

First things first, have a mobile-friendly hotel website or turn it into one. Besides, it should be accessible on all devices; be it a laptop or PC, or even tablets. The more accessible or reachable you are, the higher opportunity there is to acquire direct hotel bookings.

Moreover, keep in mind that whenever any visitor comes to your website, the very first page he visits is your homepage. For a better conversion, give as much information as you can on your website homepage.

You can also highlight your unique selling services, or your scenic surroundings (if there are any) to attract the visitors to book with you.

2. Integrate a booking engine to your website

You made your website responsive. Great! People are visiting your website, browsing it, and now want to book with you.

But, there’s a DEAD END there!

Why? Because you don’t have a booking engine integrated with your website!

Here, having a hotel’s brand website is just not enough. You need to integrate the best (READ: attractive and effective) booking engine, which will let your visitors book directly with you from the website itself.

A booking engine that just fetches the direct bookings is not enough. It SHOULD impel your website’s visitors and convert them to bookers. 

3. Optimize website to rank on Google

Your visitor lands on your website. What next? Lead him to your booking engine to book with you.

Nowadays, your guests would always explore your hotel and more options on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, to book their stay. 

And you SHOULD be there; where your guests are looking for you.

And to be there, you need to perform search engine optimization (SEO) of your hotel website. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process used to rank your hotel website on these search engines for more quality and quantity traffic. 

SEO service includes; building links from relevant sites, optimizing page content with keywords, and more. (Read all about hotel SEO – here)

Apart from this, maintain your website’s loading speed. Nobody likes a website that keeps loading for even 10 seconds.

According to Tnooz, 

32% of bookings on mobile devices are abandoned due to slow loading time.

Phocuswire

A slight delay can let bookers leave and switch to your competitor’s site, which will ultimately break your conversion rates.

Having said that, improvise your hotel website’s loading speed to give a flawless user-experience to your visitors while booking with you. 

4. Keep attractive CTAs on your website

Your visitor lands on your website. What next? Lead him to your booking engine to book with you.

You see, your visitor has landed on your website, he has explored your services, rooms, gallery and other pages, but he hasn’t booked with you yet.

What do you think you missed?

Well, let me tell you – it is the attractive call-to-action (CTA).

In simple words, I’m talking about the BOOK NOW button or booking box.

Your CTAs play an important role to get you more bookings, that’s why do not forget to keep appealing CTAs (Call To Actions) on your website. The CTAs should be that attractive that your visitor can’t help and click on it.

5. Highlight social proofs for your website visitors

These days, none of your guests will book their stay without checking your hotel ratings and rankings, client testimonials, social media followers and case studies. 

So, consider highlighting your reviews on your website or any of the above said parameters. 

These factors work as a proof for your visitors. By displaying these, you are giving them an assurance that your hotel is well known and trusted.

Believe me, this would definitely encourage your visitors to book their stay with you.

6. Use widgets on your website

Engaging with your visitors at every stage increases the possibilities to convert them into a booker.

But you may ask, how can you engage with each and every visitor? 

To start with, offer “direct booking discounts” to the visitors for booking directly through the website. 

Around 45% of travelers consider offers and perks important while booking.

Skift

Additionally, get a booking engine which has ready plug and play widgets; such as exit pop ups, quick notifications, welcome box, and many more. This will engage with your visitors effectively and direct them to book with you.

When your guests come across such notifications and highlights, they get more curious and they might book with you instantly. 

7. Let your visitors compare rates

Before booking a hotel room, your guests tend to go through several websites and other multiple OTAs to compare the prices. 

Now, what if you can provide them the comparison on your website itself? 

Try giving your website visitors the best possible comparison, so they can make the decision there and then. 

By doing this, your chance of getting direct bookings increases and on the other hand, it minimizes your dependence on OTAs.

Note: eZee Reservation has this price widget, through which you can give the comparison of the hotel rates with the OTA’s rates on the website itself.

8. Implement a live chatbot to attend guest inquiries

When visitors land on the hotel website and browse through your website, they may have several queries. And you have to answer them instantly, because if they don’t get any reply within a few minutes, they may leave. 

And you know what, this may lead to a bad hotel brand reputation. 

In such a case, if you’ve got a chatbot, it becomes easy for you to provide instant replies to your website visitors. 

If your guests have any questions, they would instantly ask the chatbot. And within a few seconds the chatbot will answer their queries. 

When they will get their answer in a fraction of seconds, they will be able to make a decision instantly. 

So these were some ways to generate direct hotel bookings from your website. Now you may think, what could be other mediums to get bookings from?

Let us explore them in detail:

How to increase direct hotel bookings apart from your website?

Well, there are lots of other ways to get more direct bookings. This is why many hoteliers still skip the thought of not owning a brand website. As, it’s not just your website that counts; but your reviews, your social media presence, and a plethora of other factors that affect your hotel’s direct sales.

Here’s how you can make the most of them.

9. Make the most of metasearch engines

According to Trivago,

Roundabout 50% of all online bookers make use of metasearch to discover their perfect hotel.

It is a search engine that collects different hotel rates and availability from other websites and shows the combined results, all in one place.

Listing your hotel on metasearch engines makes you more visible in the online market. It not only helps you get more online bookings but also increases your brand value globally.

Further, you can also run ad campaigns on the metasearch engines like TripAdvisor, Trivago, and Google to drive bookings. 

Not to mention, search giant Google has rolled a program called Free Hotel Booking Links for hotels worldwide to showcase their real-time direct booking rates for free. 

#PointToNote: Hotels can enroll for this program only through Google’s authorized integration partners. You can read more about it here. 

So make sure you are listed on all the possible metasearch engines.

10. Manage your online reviews

Reviews pose as a key factor in your guests’ purchase decision. 

Almost 80% of bookers consider reviews to be essential before making the final reservation. Good reviews can affect a traveler’s booking choice to a great extent. Therefore, it is important to strategically promote positive guest reviews on your website.

You can also share your positive reviews on your social platforms to build a strong brand reputation. 

And make sure that just collecting reviews is not enough, you have to respond to them timely. 

And to do that, you can use our ready-made review response templates to quickly respond to the website reviews.

11. Let guests book directly from social media

With the rapid and unstoppable march of social media, hotel marketing has grown by leaps and bounds. Hence, marketing through social media-based channels is an excellent tool for dominating search results and to drive social media traffic to your hotel website.

Moreover, set up your profile on social media, post amazing content and lure your followers to visit your hotel once. 

Even best; you can integrate your booking engine with your Facebook page and let your fans book with you from the Facebook page itself. 

Now, amid the hustle and bustle of hotel operations, you may not  be able to post the content regularly on your social media handles. 

To help you with that here, our social media posts templates. Simply download the templates, choose your favourite one and start posting. 

12. Implement targeted marketing

When you have an advanced hotel software, it can give you detailed guest data from your hotel PMS. From that, you can know your customer segments, build targeted reports, and marketing elements that you can further personalize to each guest. 

Also, you can work upon enhancing your guest experience by sending them pre-arrival, post-stay, or some precisely targeted emails, thereby increasing the number of repeat guests. 

Besides, when happy customers leave your hotel, don’t consider that as the end of the service. Keep in touch by sending special offers to happy customers on important occasions like festivals, long weekends, their birthdays and anniversaries.

Offer them special discounts to book online. Ask them to subscribe to your newsletter and send them compelling newsletters from time to time, and make them think about returning to your hotel.

13. Run ads to make visitors book directly

Your marketing strategy should be different for every sort of audience. For example, it should be different to attract new bookers, to visitors who landed on your website once, or bookers that frequently visit OTAs to book a hotel room.

And do you know which marketing strategy lets you cater to all these audiences distinctly?

Online ADS.  

You can run different online ads on Google, Facebook or any other platforms

You can design target-specific ads campaigns or strategies for increasing hotel room sales and website direct bookings.

For better ad conversions; you can also make use of our Google ad templates as well as Facebook ad templates.

14. Run loyalty programs

Your repeat guests always want to feel more special, and loyalty programs have always been a great way to do so.

By giving exclusive deals and discounts to repeat customers, you can create a powerful way to boost repeat visits that are booked directly through your website.

Loyalty programs is one of the best strategies to attract your guests to choose you over your competitors.

The post 14 Great Ways to Increase Direct Bookings on Your Hotel Website appeared first on eZee Absolute.