Tips to increase direct bookings for your hotel

It is undeniable that OTA is one of the biggest channels to promote your hotel and contributes significant revenue for hotels. However, having your hotel bookings entirely depends on OTAs is not ideal as you have to pay commissions for each booking they deliver. When it comes to optimizing cost, it is essential to boost revenue from direct bookings.

Direct Bookings count when your guests book directly with you either via your website, phone call, or walk-in, without any other intermediaries.
So how should you boost direct bookings for your hotel? Here are a few tricks.

1. Optimize your hotel’s website

Put yourself in guests’ shoes to understand what drives them to make a booking decision. Guests may first discover your hotel via online channels, but they always at least check out your website, browsing for more information before making a reservation. So make sure your website provides the most accurate and attractive information about rooms and your hotels, and some good reviews would help. Your web doesn’t need to be excellent, over-the-roof, but a clean, simple, and eye-catching one to create a good impression.
The majority of travelers book their stay on mobile, so it’s essential to have a mobile-friendly website.
Next, optimize your website to rank on Google. It is not a one-day task, but you have to keep it up as you don’t want to lose to competitors.

2. Simplify the booking process
Try to narrow your booking process down to 3 steps, make it short & simple to reduce the opt-out rate. And it is best to learn from top online booking sites.

Also, make sure your reservation system supports multiple payment methods, as well as the ability to integrate with PMS.

3. Offer more values for guests
Guest experience is not a myth, and you should take good care of it. Travelers expect more and more from their stays. The loyalty program is one of the best ways to show you care about your guests. Offer loyalty programs when guests book directly with you, where they can earn points and redeem for services discount at your hotels.

4. Increase your hotel’s reputation
Good reviews can influence a traveler’s booking decision in a big way. On the 5-point rating scale, even just a 0.5 point makes a huge impact (for ex. from 3.5 to 4). So, it’s crucial to have a strategy to collect good reviews and smartly display them on your website. Handling bad reviews is also needed to be put on the plan. Wrong ways of handling bad reviews could result in more bad reviews or destroy your reputation.

5. Leverage the power of social media
Young travelers love their social media. Thanks to social media and the internet, traveling memories are sharing across the globe in an instant. And you want your hotel’s brand is in those moments. Have your guests share photos of your hotel rooms or tag your social account on their posts is the best media tactic one could ask for.