Managing your hotel's room rates online is crucial for enhancing direct channel performance. When potential guests find lower rates on OTAs and other third-party platforms, they are likely to leave your site to book elsewhere.
Fortunately, you don’t have to accept this situation passively. Here are four impactful strategies you can implement on your hotel website to tackle this issue and enhance direct bookings.
1. Emphasize Benchmarking
To regain control over your pricing strategy, understanding how your property fares in terms of price disparities is essential. Direct channel benchmarking tools allow you to benchmark against the market and your competitors effectively.
Identify where your hotel is falling short by comparing disparity frequency and amounts with various competitor sets. Delve into the analytics—explore specific markets or booking types to understand your hotel’s disparities better. These insights will help you spot patterns and devise a clear action plan to address the issues.
Disparity data comparison
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2. Implement Price Matching
If an OTA is undercutting your rates, contact them to see if they are violating your parity agreement. Tools that provide screenshots of disparities can be very helpful in these negotiations.
Meanwhile, offer potential guests a price match to prevent them from booking at a lower rate elsewhere. This feature enables real-time adjustments to counter third-party rates that might lure users away. When a lower rate is detected during a user’s search, the feature instantly offers to match it, applying the discount seamlessly within the booking engine. Easy and effective!
Price match feature to compete against OTA prices
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3. Leverage Price Comparison
If OTAs are not undercutting your rates, make sure your website visitors know this. Use Price Comparison to assure users they are getting the best rate, encouraging them not to leave your site for price comparisons. Highlighting direct booking benefits can also give them extra motivation to book directly. The goal is to showcase your unique selling points and convince visitors that booking on your hotel website is their best option.
Price Comparison showcasing direct booking benefits
4. Personalize the Experience
To drive direct bookings, it’s crucial to understand your website visitors and offer them something appealing. This is where personalization features come into play.
Imagine a visitor browsing your booking engine for potential dates and then deciding to leave the website. With exit messages, you can detect this and deliver a compelling message to retain their attention. Remind them of exclusive direct booking perks like free breakfast or a welcome gift, or offer a personalized discount. This type of tailored messaging can effectively entice the visitor to stay on your site and complete their booking, making the user experience more personal and engaging.
Exit reminding visitors of direct booking perks
These four strategies are some of the most effective ways to tackle price disparities on your hotel website. While price disparities are inevitable, these actionable tips can help you combat them and boost your direct bookings.