The rules of online hotel marketing have been changing for a few years and now in the hotel industry it is not a piece of cake. OTAs, metasearch sites, destination sites, and tools like last-minute booking apps or mobile apps are so numerous that the average traveler uses more than a dozen sites before making an online reservation. Don’t ignore the fact that travelers often switch between mobile phone, laptop, iPad, etc. to research and make a travel reservation. Hotel Revenue Management Tools have minimized these challenges to a great extent.
The change in traveler purchasing behavior, coupled with increased access to online/mobile travel tools, represents both a challenge and an opportunity for hoteliers. All of the aforementioned platforms provide real-time data with deeper details about the consumer’s online journey. So it justifies all the reasons why all hotels should start tracking prices on the mobile app as well.
Increased use of smartphones, bargain-hungry consumers, last-minute booking apps on mobile devices, and penalty-free bookings have made competition tougher in the hotel industry. These are just some of the factors why travelers are now booking hotels closer and closer to their check-in date. According to most experts and recent data, delivery times for reservations have been drastically reduced.
If your hotel constantly cuts prices on these last minute bookings, you are losing a lot of your revenue, especially those booked on OTA, you are losing even more by paying high third party commissions.
However, there are ways to deal with this new trend of the rapidly shrinking booking window:
Stop worrying, use it to your best advantage
Instead of worrying about shrinking booking windows, hoteliers should start focusing on how to turn this to their best advantage. Create a strategy on how to convert your best prospects faster with a dynamic booking recovery campaign.
The findings have shown that millions of travelers with long booking windows are frequently ignored by hoteliers on the off chance that they will become customers.
Pay special attention to prospects who have already visited your website and searched for inventory on dates that coincide with your off-peak periods.
This could be a substantial opportunity to reconnect with lost leads, convert them to bookings, and improve days that suffer from extremely short booking windows! Have more direct bookings and save money spent on commissions.
Know the occupancy forecast
An efficient revenue management tool can easily provide you with a forecast for each record date. Equipped with this, you can easily identify the days/weeks that cause low ADR and occupancy and define your pricing strategy accordingly.
Captures website visitor’s email addresses for retargeting
Once an online prospect searches for a room on the selected dates, they will need to enter their email address in the reservation process. That way, you now have the necessary contact information to redirect them if they abandon your reservation halfway.
Send personalized offers
After a potential customer vacates a reservation, follow up with them with a targeted offer email with a personalized greeting thanking them for considering your property and offering a limited-time incentive to book your hotel directly. Certainly, these offers reduce your net income per room, even less than the commissions you pay for OTAs or other last-minute booking sources.
Reward visitors who have shown your willingness to book with you or nearly complete a booking in a specified period; you can close more reservations before. Thus, it eases fears of the short booking window.