The consumer process for booking a hotel room follows a similar thread to making any other big ticket purchase, with potential destinations discovered through online searches and other recommendations. Once the potential visitor hits your booking engine, having good conversion rate optimisation and following tried-and-tested ecommerce measures to funnel visitors through the checkout process is imperative.

While hotel marketing can be complex, using some of the proven ecommerce techniques that brands in other spaces deploy to take their site visitors from browser to online buyer, can also be useful when there is a need to increase direct bookings and push up reservations made on site.

Try these tried and tested, accepted rules of ecommerce success for guaranteed reservation increases and a busier hotel reservation system software.

1. Add a Sense of Urgency

E-commerce sites know only too well how much adding a sense of urgency can help drive up sales and hotels can take advantage of this clever tactic, too. Nobody likes to feel they’re about to lose out on access to a great deal, so by including a feature which advises on room availability you can create a sense of scarcity and reaffirm the popularity of your hotel.

This is a powerful conversion tool which can markedly increase direct bookings, as well as enhancing the overall desirability of your offering in the first instance. It’s one of the things you can do when you use Digital Hotelier’s own booking engine. This tactic can be deployed in several different ways, from keeping a tally of how many rooms are left when availability falls below a set level, or tracing how many visitors are currently viewing your page. This will appeal to the social aspect of your hotel guests, and the natural desire to value what others are also interested in. 

2. Make it Simple to Book

The usability of your hotel reservation system software is a key factor to consider when building your booking engine and also whilst organising the navigation of your website. You can help to minimise drops in abandoned bookings simply by applying the basic principles of e-commerce to this crucial area, checking the navigational routes of your website make sense and naturally lead to your optimised, easy-to-use and easy-to-understand booking software which works on both desktop and mobile devices. A streamlined and well-structured menu and clear navigational aids to help customers reach the crucial end destination of making a booking will ensure your hotel reservations are at their greatest possible levels.

3. Guarantee Your Rates

Whatever else your hotel guests care about, for the vast majority of travellers, price is likely to be top of mind. Alongside spending time outlining the genuine benefits and points of difference your property has to offer, including a rate comparison tool or absolute price transparency helps to reassure your guests they are getting a great deal – something e-commerce retailers have known for many years.