How to launch online sales for your hotel. Do clear online promotion

When I saw this article on a foreign website about hotel marketing, I immediately thought that it should be included in our FullHouse section. It describes the principles of work that TravelLine promotes and which our partners adhere to - leading hoteliers in Russia and the CIS.

Original article. Screenshots for examples were taken from sites developed by TravelLine.

Let's go...

Direct website traffic is very important for placement media. The hotel website and the booking module built into it are the tools through which the hotelier can control margin, image, rating and other important factors.

Hotels must be able to be independent, especially if we are talking about small hotels with low level recognition.

The Internet is an honest “battlefield”, but at the same time, densely populated and noisy. If the hotel does not have a multi-channel marketing strategy, it is very difficult for him to be noticed.

Consequently, you will have to be too dependent on online agents such as booking.com. Hoteliers need to do more than just attract potential customers to their website. The website itself needs to be made into a platform that the client would prefer over other booking channels.

So, how can hoteliers level up? direct traffic on your website?

1. Best tariff
This is your site, your own channel. This is the place where you are most in the best possible way can control prices and margins and therefore this channel should be given all the privileges. Best prices should be on your website. Example of a website and booking module with the designation favorable tariff: Aurora Hotel (Omsk):

Other sites and booking systems may well provide the same prices.

However, you must ensure that your site does not have any competitive disadvantages. If you offer non-refundable rates on agency websites, then they should also be present on your website. Example, tariff of Gamma Group of Companies (Izmailovo, Moscow):

If you are participating in the program Genius from booking.com, which gives a 10% discount, then the same discount should be offered to customers who return to the site or fans of your Facebook page.

Moreover, to stand out from online agencies, you can publish price comparisons and offer special discounts and promotions. Example: promotions of the Cosmos Hotel (Moscow):

2. Flexible tariff policy
Dynamic pricing policy means not only lower prices in the low season and higher prices in the high season. You should sell your services at huge discounts when you realize you won't be able to meet your expected occupancy rates. certain moment time. Such actions will lead to increased customer loyalty and awareness of your brand. You must meet your customers halfway and encourage them to choose your hotel.

3. Beautiful optimized website
When you are trying to attract customers to your website, remember that it should look attractive. So much so that when your potential client lands on it, they get a pleasant impression and want to talk about it or add it to their bookmarks.

Remember also that the site should reflect your experience and brand values, be easy to navigate and showcase the hotel's benefits through photographs. high quality. Example: website of the Green House hotel (Tyumen).

4. Creating links to a website is easy
Be sure to place your hotel information in all directories where appropriate. This information should include not only information such as location and contacts, but also a link to the official website. Example: TravelLine catalog, page BEST WESTERN Vega Hotel & Convention Center (Izmailovo Vega, Moscow):

5. Connection with social networks
It is very important to have attractive pages in the most popular social networks. Nice page on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter feed can significantly bring you closer to your customers and increase your online presence.

Example: Nevsky Hotels Group facebook page(St. Petersburg):

6. Separate niches
Strive to have good search positions, based on geographic location - this is very expensive and perhaps even unacceptable. Instead, focus on specific markets that might be interested in your hotel. After that, fix these niches for SEO. For example, for the niche “sports services” search queries could be “hotel paragliding Alps” or “surfing center Bali”.

7. Availability in multiple languages
Your site should be available in multiple languages. Having your website accessible to visiting guests will certainly be to your advantage.

And the opportunity to provide a visa invitation to Russia for a foreign guest will also increase sales (TravelLine note):

8. Website optimization for mobile devices
Usage mobile devices is becoming more ubiquitous, so your website and booking engine must be optimized.

It is also important that the site displays correctly at each stage of the booking. According to Google research, 40% of vacationers and 36% of business travelers use mobile devices to make bookings.

Ideally, your website should have a separate mobile version for smartphones and tablets. Example: mobile version of the Vostok Hotel website (Tyumen):

9. Use offline content
For example, if you have brochures about your hotel and nearby attractions, post this information on your website. Once it is available online, you will notice an increase in clicks.

10. Give clear titles to your photos.

The hotel business has become a “tasty” niche. From 2013 to 2016 inclusive, Rostourism records a stable increase in domestic tourism volumes by 20% annually. The reasons are currency fluctuations combined with changes in economic conditions in Russia. There are more and more hotels. How to fill all the rooms with compatriot tourists? This is what we will talk about.

Do you need to attract clients online and how much to spend on it?

According to statistics, a hotel that does not promote its business online loses 30-50% of sales. Plus, the level of brand awareness suffers. The inability to book a room online is inconvenient and looks like a flaw on the part of the owners. The result is a decrease general impression about the quality of service, loss of expansion opportunities client base and the outflow of regular guests.

How to launch online sales and not waste your budget - this topic worries every hotelier. With proper promotion on the Internet and sufficient investments in marketing from 10% to 15% of turnover, room occupancy will be at the level of 85%.

Based on the length of a person’s stay in a hotel, it is customary to distinguish:

  • for guests requiring accommodation - room rental for a day or more;
  • for guests who do not require accommodation - rent a room for several hours (hourly rental).

Based on the purpose of arrival, tourists are usually divided into two groups: business and personal purposes. Each of the listed categories determines its average hotel stay and check.

Tourists arriving for business purposes are divided into two subgroups:

  • Business tourists (“business travelers”);
  • Tourists coming to competitions, seminars, performances, etc.

On average, such clients rent a room for 3 days. In addition to renting a room, in 90% of cases meals are ordered on the hotel premises. Interesting for business guests additional services: rental of meeting rooms and conference rooms. Business tourism involves accommodation for 1-2 people and groups - from 3 people. Hotels used for business purposes require a convenient location relative to transport links.

Personal goals, like business goals, are divided into two subgroups:

  • Cultural and educational trips;
  • Event and health tourism.

Cultural and educational tourism is seasonal. It can be individual (1-4 people) and group (5-30 people). People are attracted by the affordable price or good location.

For tourists arriving to attend the event, the average length of stay is 1-2 days. But for such tourists, related products play a decisive role in the service bill: organization of leisure time, banquets. Such groups are usually large - from 10 people, for example, a wedding. The hotel can accommodate newlyweds and all banquet participants.

Below we want to talk about the main techniques, methods and channels for sustainable attraction of guests requiring accommodation, regardless of their purpose of arrival.

Step 1. Create a representative office on the Internet

There are several ways to attract customers to hotels:

On this stage you will need:

  • about 15,000 rubles (one-time) for registration of communities;
  • from 20,000 rubles per month for promotion for hotels in Moscow, St. Petersburg and resort cities.

Hotel website

You can’t do without it, especially if the hotel has more than 10 rooms. But here there are three roads:

  • landing page or landing page;
  • template site;
  • resource with individual design.

Let's look at each one separately. Each subsequent type of commercial resource includes the advantages of the previous one. That is, a template site also has the advantages of a landing page, and a specially developed design will allow you to use all the necessary functionality of the resources.

The landing page will become the landing page when configured contextual advertising. The solution is focused on conversion, so here a potential client can place an order and even pay for it. Sufficient for hotels with up to 10 rooms. The cost of the solution is from 50,000 rubles.

If you have several services, for example, holding banquets, then you can do multilanding, i.e. a solution that combines 5 landing pages.

At original title Landing/multi-landing hotels can be promoted based on brand and reputational requests, but the main thing is to actively attract guests through contextual and targeted (in social networks) advertising.

At this stage you will need:

  • landing page – ~50,000 rubles (individual development of design and concept), >50,000 rubles – promotional landing pages for actively promoted projects;
  • multilanding - approximately costs multiplied by 1.5 of the cost of the landing page;
  • for advertising from 30,000 rubles per month (less can be done, but then the landing price will have too much influence on the overall picture of profitability).

Template site. It can be promoted for queries of any frequency and filled with content that interests potential clients. You can select suitable material for each marketing channel. For hotels with more than 10 rooms.

It is necessary to take into account that the site should not just be “stupidly” based on a template, but with personalization: well-designed icons, modernized sections, a full translation.

Experienced developers do not recommend relying on Bitrix, but suggest using free CMS, such as Drupal, WordPress, etc.

This method assumes:

  • template website with personalization – from 55,000 rubles;
  • for advertising from 30,000 rubles per month;
  • on search engine promotion from 20,000 rubles per month.

Individual website design. Along with the advantages of a template solution, there is variability in both the design and structure of the resource as a whole and each type of material separately. A website created specifically for your hotel or even a chain will emphasize its status. Suitable for hotels with 100 rooms or more and hotel chains. Development cost from 130,000 rubles.

Please pay attention to the fact that the site is convenient for sales, namely, it is designed for:

  • promotion - presence of meta tags, individual pages for each service, mobile adaptability, the possibility of collecting geo-dependent requests is taken into account;
  • possibility to book from the website – availability convenient forms applications with the choice of a specific number;
  • possibility to pay on the website. The more payment options a potential client can use from the site, the higher the chances that he is yours;
  • involvement - the ability to order a call back.

It is important that your representation is comfortable for the client, i.e. assumed:

  • availability. Laconic design sells better; the clearer, the more convenient;
  • adaptability. The shares of network penetration from desktop and mobile devices for commercial sites are equal, given that mobile internet– this is predominantly the solvent part of the population; adaptability ensures growth targeted traffic doubled.

Administrator convenience will save time, money and nerves, so equip your site right away:

  • Channel Manager – will make it possible to automatically manage offers on booking portals (prices, available rooms, promotions);
  • convenient admin panel.

This is perfect for hotels with 20 rooms or more and especially for banquets.

At this stage you will need:

  • completely individual website – from 130,000 rubles;
  • investments in advertising from 100,000 rubles per month;
  • investment in search engine promotion from 50,000 rubles per month.

Step 2. Post on booking portals

Potential clients prefer to use booking platforms or booking aggregators. Because:

  • all offers are collected in one place;
  • easy to compare prices and scope of services offered;
  • In order to book a room, you only need access to the Internet;
  • The reputation of the hotel on the generator can be trusted. The moderators are strongly committed to ensuring that hotel ratings are truthful.

Hotels also have advantages when registering with aggregators:

  • savings on advertising budget - the aggregator is spent on promotion and context for commercial requests;
  • visibility of offers to users from anywhere in the world;
  • attracting additional targeted traffic to the site;
  • participation in hotel ratings based on customer reviews.

Please note that the first line of contextual advertising in Yandex and Google is occupied by the booking.com aggregator. The cost of placing an ad in this place only in Yandex.Direct is:


It is clear that a small hotel cannot provide context for such a “delicious” request. And the portal goes for it.

How much does it cost to be included in the aggregator directory?

Some booking portals, such as Booking.com, charge a commission of 15% (or higher) of the transaction amount. There are also those who calculate their income using the cost-per-click model, for example, trivago.ru. But in any case, the business owner pays for the action: booking, application, call, etc. Therefore, the risks when collaborating with aggregators are minimal; in 99% of cases, the hotel receives a potential client or one who has already paid for the booking.

When registering with an aggregator, a small hotel can afford not to budget for contextual advertising and website promotion. Moreover, in the situation with aggregators, the expression that half of the advertising budget is definitely wasted loses its relevance, because payment occurs only if a lead is received.

Important: as we know, miracles do not happen. And all aggregators on at the moment give the hotel a peak occupancy of no more than 30%, which does not allow it to exist. Moreover, the commission for attracting a client is quite high, and he remains with the aggregator, and not with the hotel, i.e. re-booking will take place with 90% probability, again through the aggregator.

How to “squeeze” the maximum number of clients from an aggregator

The efficiency ranges from 30 to 4 percent of the entire hotel occupancy. Below are the leader's indicators taken from the website on February 22.


“Booked 123 times today” – impressive, isn’t it?

And these are the indicators of the hotel with minimum rating in the same city.


“The most recent booking is 10.02,” at the time the screenshot was taken, 22. The difference is obvious. Pay attention to the number of reviews in the first and second illustration: 10,064 and 0.

  • Complete the hotel profile in detail;
  • Use a lot of high-quality photos (with a resolution of 4200 megapixels or more).
  • Read the contract carefully. For example, to get benefits on Booking.com, it is enough to increase the site’s commission by 5%.
  • Motivate customers to post reviews about your hotel on aggregators of interest, especially if they came to you through it.
  • Expand your infrastructure than more positions your hotel responds to, the higher the likelihood that they will come to you;
  • State your benefits, but be truthful. People are looking for either the cheapest or most comfortable offer. If your hotel isn't the most comfortable or the cheapest in town, it may be the most affordable in the area. Point it out!

What else you need to know about aggregators

Large portals work with trusted hotels. In order to register in the service you must obtain registered letter to the hotel address and officially conclude an agreement. After going through all the formalities, which, as you understand, can take a long time, the hotel is included in the rating.

Registering on booking portals is not easy, but this marketing tool works. The number of portals is constantly growing. There are currently 400 resources. Just a few of them:

  • Booking
  • Ostrovok
  • Otkogo
  • Airbnb
  • HRS Hotels
  • Hotels

The more aggregators are used to attract customers, the higher the percentage of sales. Don't miss the opportunity to increase hotel occupancy by 30%. If you don’t have time (and placing yourself on 400 sites is really difficult, considering that one registration with filling out takes 8 working hours!) or you don’t have enough experience, try the adhotel.ru service. This will speed up the registration process and save you from headaches.

At this stage you will need:

  • from 5,000 rubles when contacting adhotel.ru;
  • from 8 hours if performed independently.

Step 3. Launch contextual advertising

Contextual advertising is a tool for getting quick results (first calls/bookings within 3 days). At the right approach advertisements on the Internet bring 30%-40% of visitors. The performance and level of investment depend on the class of the hotel and seasonality.


Setting up contextual advertising is a delicate matter.

When setting up contextual advertising, use geotargeting - display advertisements depending on the location of the potential client. For hotels receiving tourists from Russia, cities located at a sufficient distance from the advertiser's property are selected. For hotels with hourly rentals, the demonstration can also be carried out within the city.

If the services are focused on business tourism, it is important to indicate directly in the ad:

  • terms of payment (cash, bank transfer, with VAT and without VAT);
  • Wi-Fi access;
  • access to office services - photocopier, printing of documents, etc.;
  • availability of a conference room or coworking center;
  • 24-hour service;
  • soundproofing of rooms;
  • close proximity to transport interchanges;
  • quick check-in.

For tourists - travelers it is important:

  • hotel level;
  • close proximity to tourist areas;
  • availability of parking for clients' cars;
  • view from the hotel windows;
  • room equipment - telephone, air conditioning, TV, minibar, household appliances, safe;
  • conditions for active recreation;
  • possibility to book an excursion;
  • service aimed at children - availability of animators, stroller rental, etc.;
  • rental of vehicles - from a car to a bicycle;
  • availability of baths and saunas on the hotel premises.

For event tourism (banquets), it is important to indicate:

  • hotel class;
  • number of seats in the banquet hall;
  • types of banquets and types of cuisine offered by the hotel restaurant;
  • presence of a celebration organizer.

The cost of accommodation is important for all types of tourists. If the target audience is solvent tourists, you should focus on comfort; if you are targeting mere mortals, mention affordable prices will be noticed potential client first of all.

Depending on the class of services and the average bill, the cost of attraction varies. For a 5-star hotel with an average bill of 50-100 thousand rubles, attracting a client can cost up to 10 thousand rubles. For hostels from 50 to 1000 rubles. It all depends on the hotel’s pricing policy and its occupancy.

How to calculate the budget for a contextual advertising campaign

We calculated the cost of attracting a client with an average bill of 15,000 rubles (5 days and an average cost of accommodation of 3,000 rubles). Such a client costs the hotel an average of 1,050 rubles.

Attracting each corporate or long-term client, including a guest from among those invited to the wedding, is more expensive - 1200-2500 rubles. But this is subject to weekly analysis and optimization of the advertising campaign (AC) and combined use all advertising channels. To calculate the amount of investment in attracting guests, use the formula:

Number of guests * attraction price = budget of the Republic of Kazakhstan

The fewer guests you need to attract, the cheaper the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Step 4. Promote the hotel website

Small hotels with up to 30 rooms can save on this channel. Such high frequency queries, as for example: “hotel in Moscow” is rarely displayed on the hotel website. Specifically for this request, the first official website of the hotel, or rather even the chain of Moscow hotels, appeared only on the fifth page of the search results. This hotel offers 1954 accommodation options in Moscow and positions itself as a hotel chain. It is clear that for such a volume of tourists, website promotion is necessary.


Attempts to find the website of a hotel with up to 100 rooms by name were unsuccessful. You can evaluate the scale of a business whose website was seen in the TOP for a branded query (name only).


Why is this channel not interesting for small hotels? Limited number of rooms. Such volumes can be filled from the context, plus direct offline sales. Why overpay for applications that are obviously unnecessary?

For hotel complexes with 30 rooms or more, website promotion is necessary. The pattern is simple - the greater the need for customer flow, the more marketing channels there are.

The first results of website promotion will be in 3-6 months. But this channel is focused on long-term results. Even after promotion stops, for another six months to a year the site will occupy its previous position. From the context, you only sell when you pay.

Calculation of investment level: promotion price from 50,000 rubles per month. To obtain the first result, work on the site takes at least 3 months. We count: 50,000*3 = 150,000 – minimum. Promoting a hotel website throughout the year will reduce the level of acquisition costs by 3-5 times.

But, even taking into account targeted promotion, even for branded queries, it is difficult to guarantee the first position in the search results. Let's look at an example - Villa Marybelle. The name is unique, which is important for a brand request, but let’s pay attention to what position in search results.

Yes, the first page, but not the first position. And even after the group on facebook.com.

Step 5. Advertising on social networks

The advantage of social networks is their segmentation by target audience. For hostel-class hotels, there are enough VKontakte users; hotels oriented towards business class will find clients on Facebook. The easiest way to use social networks as advertising platform– these are teaser advertising and advertising posts. They are configured taking into account:

  • retargeting – selecting users based on their interests;
  • geotargeting – selecting users based on their location;
  • lookalike targeting – selecting users based on their behavior.

Thanks to this, it is possible to identify a specific target audience - “sift out the wheat from the chaff.” As a result, ads in the form of teasers appear on the screens of users who meet the requirements specified during setup.


Or posts that reveal the advantages of the advertiser’s offer.

“Guerrilla marketing” is widely used in social networks. Research shows that in 70% of cases people trust the experience of other people. For this purpose, influencer accounts are used. They express their opinion, which ultimately plays into the hands of the hotel that pays for this opinion.

Viral marketing includes videos and articles with content that is interesting to the target audience, motivating action, and mentioning the advertiser’s brand. At the same time, the video sequence and the meaning of the message should be so “catchy” that people would repost it. In other words, the purpose of such advertising is to ensure that representatives of the target audience relay information about your offers. The better quality viral content, the less investment its distribution will require.


Step 6. Your brand – service packaging

Working with online media, reputation on booking aggregators and with review sites of regional significance is the road leading to strengthening the brand. This marketing channel is recommended for giants in the segment of 100 rooms or more. The goal is to attract the attention of the target audience and be heard.

Before working with a brand, it is important to decide on the positioning of your hotel. Precisely selected positioning will make your offer stand out from the rest and show its individuality. There are several criteria:

  • purpose - what type of tourists the hotel accepts, and what class it is aimed at. If, for example, a hotel is aimed at elite tourists, then its presentation should be based on criteria that are important for VIP class tourists. For example, a hotel with the most comfortable rooms;
  • individuality - for example, a castle hotel with an interior in the style of Louis 14;
  • by benefit - for example, you can rent the entire hotel for a celebration.

To promote a brand in any segment, it is important to regularly carry out information seeding in order to strengthen the brand: publications on visited resources, posts on social networks, contextual advertising campaigns for brand and reputation queries with landing pages, revealing the brand concept.

To always control your brand reputation, you need to study:

  • what queries are used to search for your hotel;
  • on which sites the audience you are interested in lives;
  • what resources are used to study the opinions of established clients;
  • what criteria of your product are important for the target audience
  • what can motivate the user to perform a conversion action, for example, go to your website.

Taking into account the information obtained as a result of completing the listed points, it is necessary to regularly:

  • lead groups on social networks;
  • post on third party resources PR articles;
  • control activity on behalf of established clients on thematic platforms, booking portals and review resources;
  • motivate established clients who are satisfied with the quality of service in your hotel to leave reviews on aggregators, social networks and review sites;
  • conduct activity on behalf of the company on review sites and booking portals - respond to reviews of any color. For “thank you” - “thank you”, for “ah-ay” - “we’ll figure it out.”

The greater the monthly reach of the target audience, the faster and more noticeable the result will be.


As you can see, there is nothing military about promoting a hotel; the main thing is to use the channels that are suitable for a specific business.

Booking.com, which monopolizes the online booking market, is becoming more and more greedy. Now the commission will be 22%. I'll tell you how to keep this money for yourself and increase your sales.

Clumsy marketing in HoReCa. How to start selling?

Most hotels work with Booking.com. This is the largest housing selection platform in the world. There are alternatives to it (Expedia.com, Hotels.ru, Trivago.ru, airbnb.ru) and quite a lot. Typically, hoteliers register in several accommodation selection services at once (more often in all possible ones) in order to receive a stable flow of clients. On Booking.com, each hotel (hotel, hostel, apartment) has its own rating: visitors can share their impressions after staying at the hotel. Over time, good entrepreneurs gain a positive reputation and receive more bookings, while bad entrepreneurs gain a negative reputation.

You just need to register in Booking and the first orders will already be sent. Cool? Not really…

Why clients? Predatory lead generation

Housing search services provide their services on a reimbursable basis. For each transaction (reservation), a commission is deducted from the owner of the property. Here are the “prices” for clients from Booking and its analogues:

  • booking.com from 12% to 20% (yes, up to 20%!)
  • hostelworld 10%
  • asiarooms 15%
  • tripadviser
  • trivago
  • agoda 17%
  • sawadee 20%
  • hrs 15%
  • airbnb officially only 3%, in fact it turns out to be 22% 1

So, friends, on average you give 15% of the booking cost to Booking. And this is the most popular platform in the Russian Federation, which brings in 90% of online bookings. Where do I get this data from? Our studio works with 5 large hotels and three hostels in Kaliningrad. Moreover, we work with hoteliers from Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod. We helped the westernmost hostel in Russia “get into the world”, filled one good hotel on the Curonian Spit to capacity, increased the average bill for a hotel in Zelenogradsk and achieved excellent results with other Customers. So the numbers (analytics), one might say, are first-hand.

The economy should be economical, some more numbers

Depending on the city (business, tourist, transit) and type of accommodation (from hostel to hotel), the cost of living and the average stay time vary. Averaged for Kaliningrad we get the following figures:

  • The average stay during the season is 7 days, in the off-season 4 days, total (7 + 4) / 2 = 5.5 days.
  • The average price of a room per day is 2,500 rubles.

I did not take hostels into account in this calculation. There is a slightly different “economy” and its own survival features. By the way, a hostel can still be promoted cheaply on the Internet due to the relatively low competition.

Let's calculate how much money the booking site will spend from our “average check”. So, we have attention!

5.5 days * 2,500 rubles * 15% commission = RUR 2,062

I note that hotels in the region are booked for fewer days. For Zelenogradsk and Svetlogorsk the stay is 4 days. This is due to the fact that many Kaliningraders book a hotel for one or two nights on the weekend. Local residents “spoil the statistics” a little, but I don’t have separate data for nonresident clients. Therefore, we get the following figure:

4 days * 2,500 rubles * 15% commission = RUB 1,500

This is exactly how much a hotel owner in the region gives to Booking for one client.

With a room stock of 15 rooms and downtime between rooms being occupied for one day, we get the following:

15 rooms *

30 days in a month

5.5 days guest check-in time + 1 day of downtime

* RUR 2,062 Commission of Booking and analogues = RUB 142,753.25

So, we get that if the room stock is fully occupied, the hotelier from Kaliningrad will pay commissions of almost 150,000 rubles. (for the Kaliningrad region it turns out to be 135,000 rubles). It is noteworthy that “customer quality” does not matter in the resulting formula: Booking.com’s commission is taken as a percentage of the cost of the stay, regardless of the length of stay.

When working with sites like Booking.com, the hotel owner accepts the “rules of the game.” Booking makes it convenient to pay - money is debited at the time of payment. No need to plan advertising budgets or take risks own funds. There is no need to build your own marketing and, moreover, even think about sources of sales. This is a choice of small guest houses and “two-star hotels” that have no prospect of growth and are ready to give 15-20% of their profits for the benefit of Booking.com, since they cannot manage the money in the best way.

Throw Booking for money

This may surprise you, but there is a mandatory requirement of price platforms for hotels that work with them: prices on the hotel website and in Booking (Airbnb or others) must be the same. If you set prices on your website lower than those at which you give your number to Booking.com, you will be disconnected from the system. This is such a @#$ kid. And business owners sign up for it.

Before booking a hotel, Booking visitors like to study the website of their future place of residence. Usually a couple of things are uploaded to Booking best photos, a little text about the establishment and that’s it. You can't even provide your contact information and a link to the site. To find out the menu and prices of a restaurant, see the view from the window or contact a guest on a question of interest, he has to google the hotel website and search necessary information there.

So, savvy businessmen from Mother Russia came up with this trick: if a site visitor comes from Booking, then he is shown an offer to receive a gift when booking a room on the site. The gift can be anything (discount, dinner, transfer, etc.), the main thing is that the client wants to make a purchase on the hotel website and not from Booking. This trick can be used, but you need to know some nuances if you don’t want to run into fines or being kicked off the court.

Marketing in HoReCa. Smart sales channels

The only advantage of working with booking services is the minimum entry threshold. Connecting to the site costs nothing. You pay money as orders arrive. I don't see any other advantages. Here are the disadvantages of using booking services as the main sales channel:

  • Very high deductions from profits (from 15% to 22%)
  • There is no way to control the quality of leads (must process all applications, regardless of whether the room is booked for one day or a week)
  • It is impossible to increase added value through upsales
  • High competition, which “pulls” prices down

1 About Airbnb, it must be said that in the future it will become much more popular in the Russian Federation and since 2017 it has begun to gradually squeeze out the market from Booking.com. With one of our clients, we decided to connect Airbnb.ru as a source of sales. “Fell for” their stated “only 3% commission.” In fact, the contract contains hidden fees and “extras” that eat up 22% of the booking price. If I get around to it, I’ll write about the terms of working with Airbnb separately.

2 Google marketers managed to introduce the neologism “google” (to google) earlier than the domestic search engine. The author of the article does not agree with the state of affairs :)

When the need arises to quickly increase hotel sales through Booking.com, the first thing that comes to mind is to increase the commission. This results in increased profits for Booking.com, hence your hotel will be rewarded with good rankings in search results.

But is there negative consequences from an increase in commission? Of course there is!

When hotels enter a commission war, the same thing happens as a price war (cutting): they all result in having equal market share, but with lower profitability.

Is it possible to make OTAs “work” for the hotel, and not vice versa? Of course it is possible, but only if you choose the right formula.

Let's look at where to start.

The Great Illusion of the “Super Broker”

The biggest mistake hoteliers make is trusting that intermediaries will do everything possible to sell the services the hotel offers. Perhaps this is more about naivety than a mistake, but nevertheless, not everything that the intermediary promises to do corresponds to reality.

Just because an OTA's job is to maximize profits doesn't necessarily mean that the online agency will make every effort to sell your hotel's offering.

Understanding the logic of the OTA business model is very important when striving to achieve better positions in search results and trying to overtake competitors without increasing commissions or reducing prices.

Business logic OTA

The search results that OTA generates are not random. They are consistent with the strategy of maximizing the intermediary's commercial income. To understand how to improve a hotel's OTA ranking, let's take Bookiing.com as an example. The same principles apply to other similar sites (Expedia, etc.).

To achieve higher sales revenue, Booking.com uses the following formula:

Expected revenue = (Number of bookings x Average check hotel x % commission) – Costs of attracting new customers

Where is it meant:

Number of Bookings = Number of Inquiries x Conversion Rate – Booking Cancellations

Of course, this formula is greatly simplified, but this example is enough to understand the basic principles of the business logic of OTAs and many other intermediaries.

Thus, in this formula, the number of bookings depends on three factors:

  • Frequency of visits to the hotel page on Booking.com
  • Conversion rate of visitors to buyers
  • Total number of completed reservations (if check-in does not occur, Booking.com does not receive payment)

Conversion rate of visitors into buyers. This is worth focusing on.

What does this coefficient depend on? This is perhaps the most confusing part of the formula, since it is directly or indirectly related to all other elements.

Let's look at a few specific elements that impact conversion rates from an OTA's perspective (although almost all of them apply to any hotel website or other mediation site).

1. Content

Booking.com employs hundreds of employees who translate and add hotel descriptions in several languages, and process and optimize this information.

The Booking.com algorithm “punishes” those hotels that do not provide full description of your services (the Booking.com extranet clearly shows the percentage of information that needs to be added to correctly fill out a hotel profile). Photographs are no less important; hotels are encouraged to improve their quality and increase their quantity.

Advice: Photos are the key to capturing the attention of your potential guests. Invest in a quality photo shoot, prepare thoroughly and see which photos will attract the most attention and influence guests' decision to book with you. Particular attention should be paid to photographs of bathrooms, which, oddly enough, affect conversion.

2. Reviews

Positive reviews can persuade a guest to book a room in a hotel that is more expensive than an equivalent hotel with worse reviews.

Thus, if two such hotels have the same set of services, the hotel with more highly rated will be more likely to book, despite more high cost. If you increase the number of reviews, the number of bookings will also increase. This means that the total profit that Booking.com will receive from the hotel will also increase.

Advice: Actively encourage guests who are satisfied with your service to write a review about their stay at your hotel. How to achieve this? Offer your guest a discount or bonus for leaving a review on a popular OTA. For example, a discount on your next stay, free breakfast or a hotel souvenir. IN in this case it all depends on your imagination. The main thing to remember is that any gift should encourage the guest to write a review.

3. Best price

Booking.com monitors your prices on other OTAs to ensure parity. If a hotel sells its rooms at a price lower than that listed on Booking.com, e.g. own system online booking on the hotel website, or other OTAs, then in this case the commercial interest of Booking.com will decrease, and accordingly, the position in the search results will be reduced.

Advice: Maintain price parity across all channels, use free bonuses and included additional services for your own website. To increase your position on Booking.com, do special offer for one of the numbers with a slight difference in price compared to the prices you presented on other OTAs.

4. Average booking cost

On the other hand, Booking.com is interested in keeping the average booking cost as high as possible, but in line with market conditions. In cases where two hotels have approximately the same conditions according to the above formula, priority in search results will be given to the one with higher prices (the theory is that higher prices increase benefits). Therefore, if Hotel “A” has a price of $200, and Hotel “B” has a price of $205, then priority in the search will be given to Hotel “B”.

5. More numbers

To increase bookings, Booking.com also needs to be able to sell as many hotel rooms as possible. The more they can sell, the better, and this is strategically important during periods of high demand for rooms, when they are much easier to sell. In addition, in such conditions, the last available rooms will be the most expensive.

It is for this reason that intermediaries add a clause to the list of contract conditions, according to which the hotel gives them the opportunity to sell even the very last available room (LAR). This step also justifies the conditions of minimum sales, that is, the minimum number of rooms (min quota) and categories that the hotel puts up for daily sales.

If hotels could close sales during peak occupancy periods without penalties or consequences, Booking.com would lose the opportunity for easy sales (conversion rates are much higher during periods of high demand) that generate higher profits (prices tend to be higher on those days).

Advice: The more available rooms you provide, the more potential value you offer Booking.com. But be careful. What happens to your hotel's revenue if you sell through a reseller more than you intended? Therefore, to close sales through Booking.com, make a significant price increase, which reduces the likelihood of getting reservations, and in no case remove the quota of available rooms.

You can continue to give many more different examples...

You can simply increase the OTA commission and get quick results in improving rankings in search results, which can ultimately lead to increased sales, but at the same time minimizes the hotel’s profit.

Or you can learn to use OTA ranking algorithms to benefit the hotel by incorporating the above recommendations into your overall online distribution strategy. This way, you can increase not only sales, but also the profitability of the hotel in both the short and long term.