Emerging Trends in Small Hotel Marketing: Boosting the Direct Sale Channel
As the owner and manager of a small resort hotel, I have always had a controversial relationship with online booking websites run by third parties or TPI, as they are known for short. It is not that I have any difficulty in accepting the idea of paying a commission on the booking received; this is completely normal for anyone who does my job. It was, rather, the fact of becoming in some way deprived of control of my hotel’s inventory that frightened me.
A large hotel that has tens or even hundreds of rooms and which perhaps is part of a big chain does not have problems in allowing a third party operator to sell a certain amount of rooms and this does not have an impact on the daily management of the organisation. For a small 15 to 20 roomed hotel, on the other hand, being able to optimize the occupation of the rooms asks for “intelligent” management of bookings which, as all my colleagues perfectly know, sometimes comes to the apparent paradox of having to say no to some clients.
Nonetheless, up until recently, it was by no means infrequent for small hotels like big ones, for both single organisations and big chains, to rely exclusively upon tourist web portals for their internet bookings. I can cite the case of an important national chain whose website, up to last year, sent clients to a booking form on a third party site, with the brilliant result of paying a commission on bookings which it could have collected without added costs through the chain’s website.
Today, luckily, the situation appears decidedly changed and hoteliers all over the world are striving to boost the direct collection of bookings. This radical change in strategy is not only and exclusively a result of the enhanced importance of the internet as a sale’s channel. It is also the result of a new understanding: hoteliers have finally realised that their hotel’s website is by far the most advantageous form of distribution they can rely on.
Last year this direct channel represented 80% of the total bookings received for the principle international hotel chains. This, however, is a result that many independent hotels are a long way from achieving. The big hotel chains can count on the strength of their brand name and on other marketing tactics, as for example, loyalty programs, which are not an option for a small seasonal hotel.
It might seem that a resort hotel cannot count on guests returning at more or less regular intervals and it cannot do much to try and increase direct Internet sales without a big advertising budget, but in fact much can be done and without too much wasting of time and money.
To begin with, the first step in pushing a hotel’s direct sales is the creation of an efficient online booking system. Today it is no longer possible, as it was in the past, to simply ask the guest to fill a generic booking form. Guests must be allowed to choose the room they prefer, check whether or not that particular room is available, get the cost of the stay, send the booking request and receive the relevant confirmation, all of this in real time.
Another aspect, that should not be undervalued, concerns price policy. No one likes to discover that they have paid for goods or services at a higher price. In the past a substantial incentive to use hotel booking websites came from the belief that they allowed a saving compared to the rate that could be obtained by booking through an agency or through the hotel itself. Today with the end of the so called “merchant model” this is more rarely found and there are many hotels who offer “best price guaranteed” policies on their web sites.
The most critical aspect, for a hotel willing to increase direct online booking, could be the visibility of the hotel’s website. It goes without saying that it was the search for a higher visibility which pushed a lot of hoteliers into listing their facilities in the TPI’s databases and actually there was a time in the recent past where this became, for many, an enforced choice indeed.
But the Internet continues unrelentingly to evolve and today the arrival of web 2.0 and the emergence of the phenomenon known as consumer generated content have again redefined the rules of the game. In today’s world a hotel’s reputation is largely influenced by the opinions guests leave on sites such TravelPost and TripAdvisor. It may seem a paradox in this era of global communications but nowadays it could be a re-found version of the dear old “word of mouth” that makes all the difference.
Tags: Hospitality Marketing, Hotel Marketing, IDS, Internet Marketing, Online Booking, TPI, Travel, Web Marketing