7 free solutions to increase your direct bookings

Sooner or later, there comes a point in every hotel’s lifetime when they try to get as many bookings as possible through their own website, in order to reduce the cost of the OTA commission.

In the current Covid era it is a particularly crucial issue. There is simply no extra marketing budget for a hotel to be able to compete with the search ads of OTAs in Google, to be present on metasearch pages or to lure visitors back to their site with remarketing ads.

However, there are solutions that do not involve extra expenses, yet you can significantly increase your hotel’s commission-free bookings through your own website.

In this article, we’ve put together these free solutions for you.

1. Apply best price guarantee

Studies confirmed that there is a psychological effect of price guarantee offers on the consumer. Lower risk perceptions and higher value for money have been shown to lead to greater willingness to book.

The essence of the best price guarantee is to assure your prospective guest that you are offering him or her the best price for the same room.

If after booking, the guest finds the same room on another website at a cheaper price, then – if the guest’s request is real – you will confirm the accommodation for him or her at that lower price.

If you want to offer a really good price guarantee, that is motivating enough for your guest to book directly, then in addition to offering a cheaper price, you can also offer some extra benefits.

In our “Best Price Guarantee” article, you can read about what these extra benefits can be.

2. Highlight the free cancellation option

Due to uncertain travel prospects at the moment, more than 90% of hotel rooms can now be booked with a free cancellation option.

Of course, this is a fair expectation from the guests as well. Although many people take it for granted, it is still very important to highlight this option clearly on your website throughout the booking process. This also reduces the uncertainty factor.

It’s no coincidence that OTAs also highlight free cancellations in a prominent place, from the listing page until the booking is finalized.

3. Provide benefits to direct bookers

To easily convince a visitor on your website to book directly with you, you also need to offer a real advantage over your competitors and other accommodation sites.

These benefits can be free or extended services, direct booking discounts or coupons. Any benefit can be good with which you can offer more to the guest than your competitors.

And it doesn’t really cost you more, as you save money by not having to pay the OTA commission for the guest you win this way.

If you haven’t yet provided benefits to bookers through your website, you can get great ideas for the best direct booking benefits from this blog article.

4. Check your rate parity

You can advertise as much as you want, your website can be as fast as it could be and your booking system could be easy to manage, your energy invested in the direct sales channel is worth nothing if your prices are more expensive on your own site than on other booking sites.

Monitoring pricing requires constant attention, and there are great software solutions for this, such as OTA Insight Parity Insight, RateGain Rate Parity +, or SiteMinder Insights.

However, these are far from affordable solutions.

There are alternative solutions, such as service providers that offer a free trial period: for example, this hotel rate parity checker software. During the trial period, you can already map out if there are parity issues on your various sales channels, OTA sites, and you can solve these problems right away.

And if the software works out for you, a monthly subscription of $10 will be well worth the investment.

On the other hand, if you want a completely free solution, you can use Google Hotel Ads or other metasearch sites for the same purpose. Here, like your prospective guests, you can easily and in one place compare OTA prices with your own prices.

Check and record in a spreadsheet how much your rooms will cost on your own website at different times. Then enter your hotel name in the search engine. Select the appropriate dates, number of guests in the Google hotel ads on the right side of the results list, and you can already see how much others are selling your rooms for.

Here you should make sure that you really check for as many dates, stays of different lengths and different numbers of guests as possible to make sure your prices are the same in all cases.

Of course, if the price on your own website is cheaper and it is a conscious rate policy, it will not hurt your direct channel 🙂

You can do the same check on any metasearch site like Tripadvisor, Trivago or Kayak, or even on individual OTA sites (booking.com, Expedia, Accommodation, etc.).

5. Offer unique deals

This is your website, so you have the power. Use it! Offer unique deals that aren’t available anywhere else, but on the hotel’s own website. This way you will be one step ahead of the OTAs.

In addition, this will not only help with direct sales, but can also increase your revenue if you can sell a longer stay with a gift service (such as free parking from a 3-night stay).

6. Highlight guest reviews

Today, 96% of travelers, check hotel reviews before booking.

So, it is especially important that existing guest reviews, whether from other review sites or from your own guestbook, can also be found on the hotel’s own page.

There is no better incentive for a guest than to read what a great time others had staying in the hotel. This is a more credible guarantee for the visitor than any paid marketing appearance.

7. Train your employees

Although this point is at the bottom of our list, proper staff training is at least as important a factor in the success of direct sales as any other point.

Make sure the sales team and reception staff are aware of the direct booking options and can easily tell the benefits to guests.

You can also win guests booking through the OTA page by asking the guest’s email address at check-in, so that you can contact them directly with marketing offers in the future.

However, it is essential that the colleagues are aware of the importance and need for this. The key to success is to get to know and identify with the common goals.

Evergreen solutions

While the solutions described above don’t cost anything, they are still as important as driving paid traffic to your website.

And even if our article is timed for the time of the pandemic, what is described here is evergreen. Under any circumstances, it is worth exploring, implementing, and transforming these to your own needs.

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