Chase the trend and attract the young generation customers

Online direct booking the air tickets or even the hotel rooms have become the trend in the tourism industry. A statistic report shows that there are 65% travellers book their hotel room through OTA or hotel website. As to grab for more business, all the hotelier should trace this trend and provide the online direct booking services to their customers. If the hoteliers don’t have an online booking app or website, they will probably miss out many booking orders from the young generation customers.

Here are the 5 ways to let you get more online direct booking for your hotel:

1.Create a simple and easy-to-use Online Booking app

Nowadays, there are more and more hotel guests make accommodation booking through their smartphones or tablets. So, let the booking procedures proceed as simple as possible, then all the hotel customers just can book the room happily and without any pressures at any time, anywhere. Meanwhile, the hotel online direct booking apps should also show the updated availability and room rate information automatically all the time. So that, the travelers can straightforward make their booking. The design of the apps also should match your hotel website.
The researches published on Google and Visually show that:

• 67% of leisure travellers and 78% of business travellers who travelled around would use a mobile device at some time.
• 76% of leisure travellers will make accommodation online bookings through specific OTA.
• 70% of business travellers will make the accommodation online bookings through specific OTA.
• 75% travelers have used a search engine to find accommodation.
• 50% internet users discover a hotel they are interested in through OTA and they will log on the official hotel website then.

2.Provide Special Offer to Online Booking customers

As to encourage your hotel customers to make the online booking through hotel apps or website, the hotelier should launch the special offer or extra freebie campaign round the year. The offer incentive can be a room rate discount or provide the free gift likes a bottle of wine or restaurant voucher. With the offer promotions launch at the hotel booking engine, this will let the travelers prefer to book accommodation directly on the hotel website instead of via OTA. The hoteliers can even launch other special offers, such as Seasonal promotions, Themed promotions, and Event-based promotions etc. through the year. In 2018, the revenue in the travelling industry from online booking had exceeded USD 92.5 million. The experts predict that the turnaround on travelling will up to 11.5 trillion in the following 10 years.

3.Educate travelers about the advantages of Online Booking

All of us probably will experience the advantages of online booking, for example, it provides us with convenience, the travelers can enjoy the special offer and enjoy the cashless payment. When the travelers use online booking apps like HotelX to book the accommodation for their holidays or working trip, they can proceed it anytime, anywhere and make the payment through different E-wallet apps, like Wechat Pay, Boost, Touch N Go etc. As most of the travelers willing to book their accommodation directly with the hotel website or app, they may have the opportunity to review a variety of great deals and receive valuable rewards from the hotelier.

4.Promote Online Direct Booking through Social Media Facebook

According to a study published by Google in 2014 shows that 83% of prospective travelers would do the research online through social network or photo, video sites to get the travel inspiration. Some travelers also make the decision for booking accommodations or travelling packages through Facebook. As a result, the hotelier probably can create different campaigns and build reviews for their targeted audiences through their hotel’s social media page. At the meantime, they can also hold some contests or events on Facebook and update the hotel’s information, images, special deal news etc. from time to time. There are some statistics show that how social media influences travelers to make decisions.

• 26% of leisure travelers actually plan their trip through the social network.
• 87% of those travelers who younger than 34 years old are using Facebook to seek advice before making their bookings.
• 80% of travelers are more likely to book a trip from a friend liking a page rather than responding to a traditional Facebook ad.

5. Let the travelers get into your hotel through metasearch engines

Recently, there are more and more travelers look for accommodations and compare the room rates with different metasearch engines. So, metasearch engines have become one of the tools to let travelers know your hotel and even book the room there. The following statistics let us know the importance of metasearch engines:

• More than 45% of travelers use hotel metasearch to compare hotel deals.
• Nearly 75% of travelers are believed to use metasearch engines to search for accommodations or travel packages.

Conclusion

So, would you like to get more online booking for your hotel reservations? The first step to making it become real will be to create an online booking app and do some promotions at your hotel social media page now.

Resources and further reading:

Softinn (2017) Direct Booking VS. OTA, What Hotel Need to Know in 2017
https://blog.mysoftinn.com/2017/04/25/direct-booking-vs-online-travel-agency-what-hotel-need-to-know-in-2017/
Econsultancy (2017) Six excellent hotel websites (and how they encourage direct booking) https://econsultancy.com/six-excellent-hotel-websites-and-how-they-encourage-direct-booking/
Econsultancy (2017) Four ways hotels and accommodation sites can increase direct booking
https://econsultancy.com/four-ways-hotels-and-accommodation-sites-can-increase-direct-bookings/
GuestRevu 7 tips for getting more direct bookings https://blog.guestrevu.com/7-tips-for-getting-more-direct-bookings-2/
Trivago Business (2018) 10 Ways to Bring in More Direct Hotel Bookings in 2019 https://businessblog.trivago.com/top-tips-direct-hotel-bookings-2019/
WordStream (2018) 10 Smart Hotel Marketing Strategies to Increase Bookings https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/09/07/hotel-marketing
Trivago Business (2019) An Infographic Guide to Your Hotel’s Online Distribution <https://businessblog.trivago.com/infographic-guide-hotel-online-distribution-2019/
TheStartup (2018) Top 10 Travel Industry Trends in 2019 <https://medium.com/swlh/top-10-travel-industry-trends-in-2019-d43d157de7b9
AddThis Academy (2018) How To Use Social Media To Drive More Direct Booking On Your Site https://www.addthis.com/academy/how-to-use-social-media-to-drive-more-direct-booking-on-your-site/