What is a direct booking platform?

Direct Booking Platforms boost the performance of your current website and booking engine with tools that add a layer of personalization to your website. The most effective platforms track user behavior on hotel websites and then serve tailored messages and promotions based on that behavior - for example, an early-bird offer to a guest searching six months in advance of their stay. Platform providers with significant data scale are able to automate much of the optimization experience by constantly feeding their learnings from thousands of websites back into the platform for the benefit of every client. Providing the right message at the right time improves the guest experience and has a significant impact on direct bookings (reducing OTA commission costs for the hotel). A Direct Booking Platform enables a hotelier to test and optimize their website content in order to increase conversion. With every booking, hoteliers can learn to target and convert more guests.

For info on direct booking trends, questions that you should ask vendors and more download the 2019 Hoteliers Guide to Direct Booking Platforms

How can direct booking platforms improve profitability and efficiency?

Boost website conversion: Dynamic, personalized digital experiences are now an essential part of any high-converting website - from retailers to OTAs. Hotels that want to convert more web visitors and increase direct bookings need the data-driven conversion optimization that a Direct Booking Platform can provide.
Parity management & monitoring: Hotels that are being undercut by OTAs see a 30% decrease in conversion. This means that taking control of price parity and transparently offering guests the best price direct should be at the top of any hotelier’s agenda. A Direct Booking Platform allows hoteliers to easily monitor, manage and optimize their parity to offer guests a trusted, fair price direct.
Lower OTA expenses/increase direct bookings: Shifting direct bookings to your website means that you are shifting business from high cost third parties to low-cost proprietary platforms. These platforms have fixed expense associated which means that you’ve already paid for them - a Direct Booking Platform helps you to maximize that investment by learning continuously from a wealth of data to offer a better, more effective and more personalized digital experience to customers.

What are the most important features of direct booking platforms?

Pricing and Parity Data Accuracy & Insights: Industry-leading pricing and parity data accuracy accompanied by accessible information on undercut breakdown, undercut rate vs conversion rate, parity
Price Comparison Widget: Customizable price comparison widget, regularly UX tested on real guests to optimize design
Message Targeting: Targeted messaging with advanced segmentation and triggering capabilities
Automated Live Chat: An AI chatbot designed to answer specific questions about your hotel so your staff can focus their energy elsewhere.
Drag-n-Drop Customization: A self-service online message builder allowing hoteliers to create personalized, customized messages easily (either from templates or from scratch) and to view results and edit instantly.
Hospitality grade: Live chat features designed specifically for hoteliers including PCI compliant, secure card detail collection and image/pdf uploads.
Analytics & Reporting: A quick view dashboard displaying graphs and metrics for conversion data, direct booking trends over time and additional performance data and insights.
Data Driven Experimentation: A dedicated data science team focussed on running accurate product tests and drawing industry and hotel specific insights from extensive data.

What makes great direct booking platforms?

A direct booking platform should help all teams across a business to do their jobs and see value from the tools. A good answer from a vendor would explain that their tool encourages collaborative working between teams because Marketing, Revenue, Reservations, eCommerce and Senior Management can all get an overview of the work being done, the ROI of marketing campaigns, online messaging and conversations, as well as the overarching direct booking trends over time. A great direct booking solution offers products that are designed to work together seamlessly, allowing your team to do the same.

Accurate pricing data is also integral to driving direct bookings. Guests will shop around to find the cheapest price, and if your direct booking software displays incorrect data they will book elsewhere. A good answer from a vendor on pricing data accuracy would give assurance that there is a team committed to constantly checking and maintaining price accuracy, with emergency engineers on call 24 hours a day if there are any issues. The team should also be working continuously with UX designers to ensure that the 99.5% accurate pricing data is displayed to guests in the most effective way.

For info on top rated vendors, key buying considerations and more, download the 2019 Hoteliers Guide to Direct Booking Platforms

What is the typical pricing for direct booking platforms?

This cost will typically vary based on a variety of factors, i.e. number of properties in a hotel group, quantity of rooms per property, and market segment of the properties. All licenses are purchased with an annual contract. Expect pricing between $100-300/month per hotel but make sure to request custom price quotes for your properties using Hotel Tech Report.

How long does it usually take for a hotel to implement new direct booking platforms?

The integration can vary depending on how long the providers take to complete their work. The highest varying factor is the booking engine integration. As a general rule of thumb, the more we have worked with that booking engine, the quicker and smoother the integration will be. The biggest factor that influences the time taken for implementation is based on the number of hotels being integrated and if any issues arise during the quality checks.

How do I know when it’s time for my hotel to move onto new direct booking platforms?

If your hotel website has below industry average conversion rates or traffic you should strongly consider a direct booking platform. A hotel’s website is a key channel to drive direct bookings. Direct customers bring richer data, more revenue and better direct relationships. Customers will visit the hotel website on their path to book but hotels can often miss the opportunity to convert those web visitors into direct bookers by not optimizing their website to drive bookings. Similarly, if your hotel is experiencing frequent parity breaches it may be time to consider a direct booking platform. Hotels that are being undercut by OTAs see a 30% decrease in conversion on average. This means decreased revenue, more money paid to OTAs in commission, less data and insights on the behavior of customers/what makes them convert and no direct relationship with guests. The frequency at which the hotel website is displaying the same rates as those on OTAs. The more an OTA ‘undercuts’ a hotel by displaying a cheaper rate, the lower the hotel’s direct website conversion rate.

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