As per Google, in the past 5 years searches for ‘stay today and tonight’ have grown by 519%!

Condor Ferries

That’s why hoteliers these days are promoting last-minute bookings among their guests. If you want to know more about them, you are in the right place.

In this blog, I will guide you on…

What are last-minute bookings?

Room reservations made at the last hour or prior to the hotels’ day end process are coined as last-minute bookings.

Achieving 100% occupancy is essential yet a crucial process for hoteliers, and last-minute bookings are what save them from such unbearable losses.

Business professionals or leisure travelers have spontaneous travel plans. Hence, they book hotels at the last hour.

As per an article published by Peek,

44% of leisure travelers and 56% of business travelers chose to opt for last-minute bookings. 

Last-minute bookings are beneficial for both guests as well as hotels. It’s an opportunity for your guests to book rooms at a lower price, and for the hoteliers to maximise their occupancy.

How can hotels increase last-minute bookings?

Last-minute bookings are fruitful for hotels. Here are some strategies to increase last-minute bookings.

1. Market last-minute offers on OTAs and other platforms

OTAs and websites are one of the best online platforms to source bookings at your property. Here are some intriguing statistics shared by Condor Ferries,

An average of 148.3 million hotel bookings were made every year (Before the pandemic). Out of these, 82% of bookings were made online on OTA apps and hotels websites.

Going by these figures, you can realise the importance of having an online presence. So, I would recommend running some last-minute offers and promoting them across online booking platforms.

For OTAs, you can connect with your property’s account manager or business development officer, and ask them to activate last-minute offers. Most of these platforms have various deals on payment methods like credit cards, debit cards, and net banking.

On clubbing last-minute offers with those deals, guests get a captivating discount that makes them book a room at your hotel.

 You need to implement these offers on your website also. There are various ways to do this, such as coupon codes, flat discounts on tariffs, or cashback on specific modes of payment.

But, don’t forget to update the offer’s end date on OTAs, as well as your hotel’s website.

2. Promote offers to the target audience

One of the important rules while deploying any last-minute marketing strategy is determining your target audience and pitching them the right deals. 

You can use data analytics to understand your guests’ booking patterns and filter out the ones who have made maximum last-minute bookings.

Most of the target audiences are millennials and GenZ. Apart from them, check for your corporate guests; they have client meetings on the spur of the moment.

3. Create mobile-booking offers

Smartphones have indeed made our lives easier. With multiple hotel booking applications available for android and iOS devices, one can easily reserve a room at a property within minutes.

As per the infographics share by Condor Ferries,

72% of last-minute bookings are made on mobile within 48 hours of Google search.

That’s definitely a big percentage. You can facilitate bookings by creating app-only offers. However, this is only applicable to OTAs and your brand’s mobile application. 

Alternatively, you can run this offer on your website. But ensure your website is mobile-optimised and gives a smooth user experience while making a reservation.

4. Dynamic pricing is the solution

Another way to increase last-minute bookings is through dynamic pricing. You might be aware of how the flight prices keep on increasing during the last hour. That’s an example of dynamic pricing.

For hotels, it would work in the opposite way. If you need to achieve 100% occupancy but have a couple of saleable rooms left, you can slash down the tariff for that day.

However, avoid a prolonged use of this last-minute marketing strategy, or else it would result in a catastrophic situation.

5. Introduce short-stay rates

Travelers visiting the town for a day or having early morning flights look for a hotel to freshen up and relax. 

They do have some options such as airport lounges, transit hotels, or low-budget lodges. Hotels can be an alternative choice, but a majority of them need to be booked for a day. 

This is where you can introduce short-stay rates. You can go with a day-use tariff for such guests.

Alternatively, you can also introduce special tariffs for guests having late check-ins.

6. Do not miss long weekends

Working professionals, families, students or a group of friends often plan for a weekend getaway.

As a hotelier, this is a great opportunity for you to increase last-minute bookings at your property. You can simply reduce your cut-off period and create some weekend combo offers on several room types.

Once you create the deals, start promoting them at least 2 weeks in advance. You can market these offers as exclusive deals for loyalty program members.

7. Get registered on last-minute booking websites

There are various websites that specialise in last-minute bookings. Similar to OTAs, they deal in every hospitality business. Some of the known ones are:

• Lastminute.com
• Hotwire.com
• Hoteltonight.com
• Lastminutes.deals
• Laterooms.com

If your property is not listed on these websites, register NOW.

8. Don’t forget travel agents

Travel agents often have enquiries for spontaneous group bookings or an event where there is a sudden rush of guests. In case you have saleable rooms on any day, try connecting with travel agents.

If they have a quick booking available for that particular day, you can share your best offer and seize the opportunity. 

9. Invest in revenue management services

If you are struggling with what kind of deals to rollout, you can hire a revenue management service provider.

They would make a thorough analysis of your property’s traits, guests’ booking patterns, and other such factors. On the basis of an audit report, they will guide you on the best offers to create without risking your revenue generation. 

Once you create last-minute deals, market them using various strategies like emails, social media, and WhatsApp.

What are the implications of last-minute booking?

Last-minute bookings are profitable for hotels. Yet, they have certain backdrops. One of the negative impacts is that many of your guests wait for such discounts. 

This creates an unnecessary surge in last-minute bookings, which in the long run can result in a loss of revenue. Apart from this, the hospitality industry saw a major drop in advanced bookings, which raised concern among hoteliers.

In fact, many guests cancel their existing reservations to create a new booking at subsequently lower rates. This is yet another backdrop of last-minute bookings. 

The post 9/10 Hotels Ask How to Increase Last-Minute Bookings appeared first on eZee Absolute.

Jacob, however, understood how OTAs worked; and he put that knowledge to use. Within a year, his hotel became one of the top-selling hotels in the Laguna Beach area. 

Often abbreviated as OTA, the online travel aggregators or agents are the catalyst to any hotel’s revenue growth. Based on the bookings we receive from our channel manager, OTAs contribute to around a whopping 25% – 49% of the total hotel bookings globally. Without the help of OTAs, accommodations cannot attain higher occupancy nowadays. 

OTAs help accommodations orbit market segments that they cannot reach on their own. However, new hotels are mushrooming across the town every day. These hotels are also listing themselves on the OTAs, adding to your competition. It is only fair to find means and ways to increase OTA bookings.

In this blog, I have described 13 ways to increase hotel bookings from OTA.

Ways to Increase OTA Bookings

Here are guaranteed steps that will ensure that you get more OTA bookings when applied systematically.

1. Achieve 100% Content Score

This is the first step to increase your OTA bookings. Think of your property’s listing on an OTA as its CV or as a dating profile. It should be impressive enough for the guest to add it to the comparison analysis. 

Make sure you upload the most outstanding feature of your accommodation as the header image. No one wants to look at a hotel that has a WC or a sushi dish as their header image. Upload room images from time to time to let the guests understand what they can expect when they check-in to your property.

Provide information about hotel facilities and amenities which you offer. Further, update the latest hotel policies on the OTAs and take down the non-relevant ones. A guest does not need to know your New Year Gala meals policy if s/he is checking-in in March.

2. Maintain Rate Parity

OTAs put your hotel at a higher position when you maintain rate parity. List all the room types and rate plans across all the OTAs. On top of that, keep a check on all the discounts you offer.

Sometimes, OTAs create discounts undercutting their commission to attract potential bookers. This creates a rate disparity issue. A regular rate disparity results in decreased visibility and hence lower conversion from the OTAs. Avoid it at all costs.

3. Ensure Future Dates Availability

Hoteliers often overlook the online availability of their property for future dates. Sometimes, you get so busy selling that you forget to plan  for future dates. If you cater to international guests, know that people book their international stays well in advance. 

Make sure that your hotel is available for sale on OTAs for at least 365 days from today. Pushing availability and rates is a regular process, not a bi-yearly drill.

4. Create Flexible Cancellation Policies

The OTAs have free cancellation or partial free cancellation as a part of their search funnel. This funnel helps the guests weed out the properties with harsh cancellation policies. 4 out of 5 people select that funnel while searching for a place to stay. 

If you set a non-refundable policy for all the stay dates, your property will disappear from the funnel. Set refundable cancellation policies for the lean season. If you have a large inventory to sell, you may even offer a date change when a customer asks for a cancellation.

This way neither the customer nor the hotel will be at a loss.

The wise said, “Trees that don’t bend with the wind won’t last the storm.”

5. Create Offers and Discounts

The guests and the OTA algorithms love freebies equally. There are various types of discounts that an accommodation provider should float regularly in order to ensure maximum OTA bookings. You can create offers like early-bird discounts for certain future date bookings. Create a last-minute deal to sell whatever inventory is unsold. 

Apart from that, you can create deals for the festive seasons, long weekends, market segments, loyal customer deals, mobile discounts, happy hours, discounts on F&B facilities to get more OTA bookings. 

Discounts and offers don’t have to be in the manner of cash rewards all the time. Instead, you can provide more value for money. When you extend the facilities like free early check-in or free late check-out, people who are travelling by public transport are more likely to book at your property. 

Complimentary transfers, meal upgrades, room upgrades, free usage of your other facilities like a spa will also help you increase the OTA bookings.

6. Incremental Travel Agent Commission for Better Visibility

Every OTA has features available to enhance the visibility and bookings for your property. You offer an extra commission for certain days on every booking or some direct benefits to the guests for booking from a particular OTA.

This feature comes in handy when you have low bookings despite doing everything right. You can also use this feature to get ahead of your competitors and pick up some bookings in advance.

7. Planning the Peak Dates

This is a very crucial exercise. Every hotelier MUST know the high selling dates for his or her hotel. It can be local events, national holidays, festival periods, long weekends, etc. An immensely neglected aspect is the holiday which does not affect your area but affects your clientele.

For example: Winters are regular working days in India but a holiday season in Europe, the US and other colder regions. Travel agents say that Chinese New Year sees around ten million people travelling within the nation to celebrate it. 

Create your rates and offers around these dates well in advance so you can capture maximum business from the OTAs.

8. Technology at Your Rescue

Regardless of your hotel size, it is mandatory to have different software that makes sure ease of operations. This software contributes to getting more OTA bookings directly or indirectly. Here are some must-have software tools for every hotelier.

a. Channel manager

When your property is listed on different OTAs, a channel manager is an important tool to have. It sends real-time inventory and rates to all the OTAs. This prevents underselling, overbooking, and issues like rate disparity.

b. Property Management System

Another important tool that every accommodation provider must implement, is a property management system. Since the hotel deals in many segments like FITS, MICE, Corporates, Offline agents, it is only natural to have a PMS. When the PMS is connected to the channel manager, data redundancy is prevented. You save time as the PMS updates room status on the channel manager, which then pushes the rates and inventory further to OTAs.

c. Revenue Management System

Knowing you sold many rooms in the night makes you happy. But when you realize that you could have charged more for the same bookings, it kind of becomes a joy killer. 

A revenue management system comes in handy during such occasions. It detects the increase in bookings and starts increasing the price accordingly. This way you don’t lose the additional revenue from the OTAs.

d. Rate Shopper

One more tool that every accommodation provider should invest in is a rate shopping tool. The rate shopper scraps your property’s and your competitors’ prices from different OTAs for a given time frame. Now, if you are wondering what good it does to you; let me tell you what all insights you can get from it.

• Parity Check

Rate shopper tool checks your hotel’s sale price on different OTAs for a particular date or date range. If an OTA is creating any price disparity, you can immediately come to know and act upon it so you do not lose visibility on other online portals.

• Competitor Check

Keep your friends close and your competitors closer. The guests always compare hotels with similar prices, amenities in a location while they make a booking. If your prices are competitive, there are high chances that a customer will book your hotel.

Apart from that, you can get a general market trend and decide on the pricing strategy accordingly.

9. Managing the Reviews

Getting bookings is just not enough. You must also ensure that your guests enjoy the stay at your hotel. Make sure that you collect the feedback from the guest via the OTA they booked your stay with.

Your work is not over just by getting the reviews; you must reply to them timely. If a guest has left a positive review, thank the guest for it. If there is negative feedback, thank the guest for drawing your attention to it, take corrective action and respond to the review.

At times, the guest leaves negative feedback or a fake review to sabotage your reputation. Get in touch with the OTA and get these reviews taken down or reply to them appropriately.

There are review management tools available at your disposal where you can check your reviews, know the ratings and respond to the reviews as well. My personal favourite is Critique. You must check it out.

10. Know Your Compset

In an ideal situation, every customer wants to stay at your hotel only. But in the real world, there are new hotels coming in daily and there are old hotels with a great reputation. Identify them, perform a compset analysis regularly and adjust your pricing accordingly. You can read about compset analysis here.

11. Creating Pricing Strategy

The current time requires that we make a pricing strategy, revenue goals, the competitors’ pricing and our occupancy as per the demand to get more bookings. The pricing strategy helps you to sell at attractive prices, even during peak dates.

12. Listing on different OTAs

Follow Buffett’s mantra; do not put all your eggs in one basket.

If your property is listed on limited OTAs, you are missing out on other markets. While some OTAs cater to domestic guests, others have a presence in the international market directly or with the help of affiliates. Identify them and list your property on those OTAs as well, apart from your regular ones. Ensure the OTA is compatible with your channel manager to assure a correct flow of the rates and inventory.

13. Get Tips from OTA managers

OTA account managers are your best friends. Reach out to them time-to-time to get an idea about the current booking trends, new campaigns you can participate in to increase OTA bookings. They can even help you to get a slot in booster campaigns like the deal of the day which highlights your hotel on the top.

Prevent overselling by OTAs

Nothing is good in excess. It can lead to catastrophic results. Just like you should not depend on only a selected OTAs for bookings, you should not also depend only on OTAs to get your bookings. Try to build other channels like GDS, offline agents, consolidators, etc. The best would be to get loyal customers of your own.

This helps you stay relevant if an OTA decides to shut down or if an OTA manager does not favour your hotel over the others.

The post 13 Insanely Useful Ways to Improve Your Hotel’s OTA Bookings appeared first on eZee Absolute.

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.