Your conversion rate is arguably the most important factor of all online marketing activity, helping you to assess the strength of your marketing efforts and hospitality offering from a digital marketing perspective. Though a largely undiscussed source of conversion rate optimisation, hotel rate comparison tools are one of the best tools for helping you to achieve and exceed your targets.

Rate comparison tools are designed to help customers make the right choices by checking their hotel preferences against an array of similar options by competing venues. A rate comparison tool – such as the one offered by Digital Hotelier – can provide crucial peace of mind to customers whilst also giving you the chance to check how your pricing ranks. Rate comparison tools can increase your ROI, enhance the customer experience and heighten your booking system’s capabilities by providing a more comprehensive service to new and returning customers. They are a growing concern amongst hotel marketers – read on to find out how you can use them to log more bookings in your own hotel reservation system.

This sounds obvious, but a great rate comparison tools allow both you and your customers to check where you stand compared to your competitors. If your pricing structure could be improved, this may seem like a negative aspect – but knowing how you stack up next to your competitor is key to refining and improving your own value for money. This factor means your hotel reservation system prices can be adjusted to remain competitive.

Customers favour transparency when making large purchases and there is no clearer marker of your hotel’s dedication to a transparent pricing strategy than giving them an easy way to compare and contrast.

By ensuring a user-friendly design which is fully integrated within your existing hotel reservation system, you can benefit from the added revenue-boosting effects of a smooth transactional interface. Winning over customer trust in your payment information and processing is key, so it is vital your rate comparison tool is up-to-date, speedy and accurate.

By emphasising the great value they are getting with your hotel and placing this central to your booking system, customers will be far less likely to walk away from making a booking. The clarity of your rate comparison tool is very important, as is its potential to provide accurate results even when drilling into detailed travel preferences. The more information it can store and process, the better – from both a customer-led and subsequent analytical perspective.

A detailed reporting system should be a standard requirement of your rate comparison tool, helping you to both gather and analyse lots of data pertaining to your current pricing efforts. This is a very helpful aspect for continuing to improve your efforts in this area, which has a knock-on effect of allowing you to refine and improve your pricing structure and usability over time and therefore increase your conversions.