Booking tools: Tailor your tool to your guest

Finding the right booking tool for your hospitality business could make the difference between breaking even or making a healthy profit.

When it comes to hotels, your booking tool is competing with online travel agencies (OTAs) – organisations with vast resources solely devoted to booking guests. 

“OTAs will always be more convenient as a booking method, so your internet booking engine needs to look amazing and be really good at communicating the benefits of booking direct, through smart messages, rate comparisons or just great design,” says Adam Hamadache, chief executive of digital consultancy Formula.

There are a number of ways your booking tool can help you get in front of the competition. Choosing a platform that supports third-party integrations could pay dividends: “Rate comparison widgets and upsell plugins used by OTAs have proven to be incredibly valuable at delivering a demonstrable return on investment,” he adds.

Secondly, enquire about the attribution tracking credentials of a booking engine. It’s still common for some booking engines to limit attribution tracking, withholding information about where a booking has come from – paid, organic search, email, referral or direct traffic.

Thirdly, if you operate multiple hotels that are close to each other, make sure the booking engine allows the customer to search by location rather than just by individual properties. This is important in cities such as London, where tourists visiting for the first time don’t necessarily know whether they wish to stay in Notting Hill or Shoreditch.

Finally, avoid booking engines that display rate tables. “When the guest asks for a price this weekend and they’re presented with 70 different prices for this week and next across a dozen different room types, it’s confusing,” says Hamadache.

Keep price and package options concise and easy to understand – and eliminate industry jargon. “It’s not uncommon to see industry acronyms such as BAR (best available rate) appear on the customer-facing booking engine. Use as many acronyms as you wish within your property management system, but make sure the jargon stays off your booking engine,” he says.