How did one of the domestic hotel chains increase the number of their commission-free reservations by 42%?

Hoteliers generally try to achieve similar goals: getting visitors to the hotel’s own website, encouraging visitors to make reservations and increasing commission-free revenue. However, what if, despite much effort and a high number of visitors, the site does not meet the reservation goal in a satisfactory manner?

According to statistics from Google Analytics, at least 98% of visitors will leave the site without booking; which means that only 2 visitors out of 100 will leave the site having booked a room.

In the following case study, we’ll explain how the hotel chain improved this statistic by using the HotelHood system.

The challenge

The hotel was unfortunately facing a known problem: even though it spent a considerable amount of money on getting site visitors to book directly on the site, most of them left without booking.

Solutions

With the help of the HotelHood system, the benefits of direct booking during the booking process were highlighted in an effective manner using the following methods:

1. Show secret prices upon clicking the “Check Prices/Reservation” button

The essence of the method is that the message will appear when you click on the “Book now” button, or the button to check the price or any other button for making a reservation. This makes the offer extremely effective since the visitor will see it when he or she is already interested in looking at the offers of the hotel. Additionally, this approach allows the hotel to display a better price on its own website than through any other medium.

2. Show secret prices for returning guests

The system recognises those returning guests who already showed interest in the Secret Prices campaign and displays reminders to them in the following two ways.

When clicking the button:

In a reminder bar:

3. Highlighting the benefits of direct booking by the use of Artificial Intelligence

Visitors who are about to leave the website of the hotel without making any reservations, received pop-up windows highlighting the benefits of direct booking. The use of smart pop-ups allows us to further optimise the number of bookings achievable with HotelHood. We do so by using an algorithm that predicts based on visitor behaviour as to which visitors are likely to make a reservation and which visitors are less likely to convert.

Results

Since the launch of the system, the number of bookings made directly on their website increased by 42%, the revenue increased by 52%, while the average booking value increased by 7%.
What’s more, they had 40% more active visitors on the website compared to the same period last year.
Right from the first month, the earned profit was about 30 times more than the cost of the HotelHood system.

Are you interested in how we can improve your direct booking rate for your hotel?