Even for hoteliers that does not change, indeed. All over the world new Facebook groups were born, dedicated to tourism industry professionals and employees, places where vent frustrations after a working day spent sipping customer complaints and troubles, sharing them with those who work in the same area.
Sometimes it's quite fun reading about these stories, real life and problems of everyday life, a kind of confession room of Big Brother, but for normal people who work every day and every day is faced with problems, whether large and small ones. And sometimes, in fact, it's sobering to see how increasingly hoteliers feel powerless in the face of reality, halfway between the customer and the broker.
Finally, I have to admit that some of these confessions give me a veil of sadness mixed with anguish: regular customers who start to rely on online intermediaries for their online reservations, instead of booking as they always have. It will be for convenience, fashion, immediacy. Anyway, one has the impression that, despite they are and remain regular customers, they have become clients of the intermediary.
Let's start with a premise. The total disintermediation does not exist, at least today. Let's try to understand how the booking process works and what brings the customer to book on a OTA portal rather than the hotel booking engine:
Such a theory is what happens in almost all of the booking processes. No wonder then to see a good number of visits on your site, but you have to intervene if your booking conversion bookings is not good. A good average conversion is around 3%, but there is no unique threshold for all situations and for all hotels since too many variables involved.
In the picture above, I have not purposely designed the last step of the process, the most important, where customer make the decision about the platform to use for completing his reservation, OTA site or hotel site. At this time so many variables come into play that the hotel may seek to exploit, starting from:
- Hotel Web Site: user visits the hotel website after having already seen the room prices on the OTA, trying to get more information on the hotel itself. Do not forget that any user have become "aware" of what happen since the web give them the possibility to be informed because the network allows them to obtain all the information they want when they want. If the hotel is not trying to give them the information through its website, the OTA will do in its place, thus increasing the chances that the portal will take your reservation. Last but not least, user is interested in visiting hotel website making some 'rate hoppers', trying to find more convenient fares, special offers or packages. User does not know that hotels are subject to the constraint of the parity rate, so the curiosity and the hope of finding the most affordable hotel is still alive and he knows that he can do taht through the network.
- Booking Engine: web sites are not all the same, and being on the web it's not enough to be 'attractive' to your customers any longer. So are Booking Engines. A good booking engine determines the positive or negative performance of any hotel. The usability of a booking software is to allow the user to browse and book easily, speedly and immediately. For example, what may seem small technical details such as server response time to user's request (the time that passes from the moment user clicks a button until he gets to the requested page), on the web become the fundamental aspects of usability, so a wait of 0.3 seconds and a wait of 2 seconds make a huge difference. On the other hand, the booking engine must be as flexible as dynamic to allows hotelier to easily configure all of the best methods of online sales for its services, rooms, restaurants and so on.
All things being equal (room X at the price Y, both on the hotel website and the OTAs portal), the client will be in a position of having to decide where to make his reservation. Hence what are the fundamental aspects you should work on to start your own process of disintermediation:
- Adequacy and completeness of the information: everything posted on your web site, whether they are photos, descriptions and items must be clear and understandable, should not be ambiguous and difficult to realize. The user must be sure of what he's reading and seeing, especially, he must understand it without difficulty;
- Make sure you have a booking engine that is powerful and can satisfy the needs of online retail. It is NOT absolutely true that a more expensive booking means better performance. Rather, make sure that your booking engine can meet the today's needs and, at the same time, make sure it is constantly evolving, because tomorrow is another day and the time runs much faster on the web;
- Do not simply sell only rooms, but try to offer all other services your hotel has such as restaurant, spa and fitness center, room service, transfer service from the airport or city center ... This is a focal point of the process of disintermediation. OTAs only offer hotel rooms, but they do not treat any ancillary service, unless they are included in some of your package rates. Make sure you have a booking engine that allows you to configure the sale of ancillary services. In addition to helping you to generate ancillary revenue (or extra revenue), it is an aspect that can have an important influence in the choice of the customer to book on your web site, instead of the portal one;
- Clear payment methods and cancellation policies. User does not have to feel cheated and anyway all your policies must be clear and easy to read ... This is the same concept stated in point 1: clarity and transparency. Otherwise, the user, even unconsciously, will feel "guaranteed" by booking through the OTA portal;
- Do not 'spam' OTAs' sites with too many special offers and rate packages. Keep them for your own website. I'm not talking about violating the parity rate, rightly mandatory for all the OTAs, but exploiting your special rates to give your website an added value;
- Put in evidence the special offers and packages on your website because they are easily identifiable and accessible;
- Offer your customers corporate discount codes or codes to book on your web site with cheaper rates (opaque biddings). Give these codes to your occasional customers too, especially those who have booked through an OTA ... just a little present such as an aperitif or a small discount for their next stay. Make sure that your booking engine is able to support this objective.
- Be visible and bookable from mobile devices, especially if you are a hotel with a lot of business customers who are used to move even at the last minute and who make use of BalckBarry and Iphone for their work;
- Foursquare: the social network for mobile based on geolocation. It is not yet entirely exploded, but the 2012 seems to be the right year and for the hotel opens a new, huge and magnificent opportunity for disintermediation;
- Social networks must be used as communciation tools, not even sales tools. The sale can be a direct consequence of the relationship that you will be able to establish with users who follow you. Give them the opportunity to book directly from social networks, but don't force them. It makes no sense to use social platforms to 'spam' offers, discounts, packages. This is not the way you could be attractive;
- Find out, find out, find out: the web is out of step with the times because it is already in the future. Not a day goes by without news and constantly changing scenarios, but rather than the volume of these news, very often it's the little ideas, sometimes simple, that can reverse the situation. For instance look at what is going on with Google Hotel Finder and what kind of reactions it has generated;
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ReplyDeleteSuperb blog. keep it up.
ReplyDeleteHotel Booking Engine API