How to make more money from your hotel website?
As a hotel you need to come up with new ways to increase your revenue.
There is a long held belief that your rooms are perishable and what is not sold today will not be sell able tomorrow.
That leads people to keep looking for new business. But what if you looked at existing customers to make more money for your hotel.
How to make more money from your hotel website?
How much money does your hotel website make?
I am sure you will have this metrics with you. Total room nights produced from your website multiplied by ARR from this channel.
Is it possible to increase your hotel revenue by selling more to existing guests who are already booking on your website?
Absolutely. Infact by tweaking a few things you can keep your guests happy and at the same time keep spending more.
Here is a starter list to help you with improving your average order value per guest.
Introduce a basic pricing without breakfast
While this first idea looks counter intuitive to increasing revenue, doing this will help you bring in more potential guest to the website.
On meta search site like Trivago, the lowest price is shown on top. If you have a low price option without breakfast that will show up first increasing your look to book ratio.
Once you get the potential guest you your site, you can implement some other tactics
Upsell
One simple word, lots of revenue potential.
Make sure all room category have upsells, with breakfast and upgrade to next category.
Take a look at the room page from Ibis site. Every room has multiple rates and an promise for little upsell with beer and laundry offer
Also included in the upsell is the breakfast package which can help increase revenue once guest land on your site.
Another way to upsell when a guest choose a room if by offering a hard to resist offer as a pop up overlay as does by MamaShelter – another Accor brand
You need to be careful though when you try this as it should not move people away from the original purchase intent.
Offer Packages and Discounts
Everyone loves a good deal… Offer one or six.
Infact every hotel website must have a few.
Some examples of packages which work very well are, longstay package, business package, weekend staycation etc.
Ensure you give your package enough thought. It must complement the need period of the hotel rather than taking away business from period of high demand.
Have Recommendation and Social proof
People trust people they like and love. They listen to their recommendation and they buy.
TripAdvisor is the largest recommendation engine available from hotel industry.
Love them or hate them, they do have lots of loyalist who will check out all the reviews about a hotel before they book.
Showcase your best testimonials or Tripadvisor certificates to get people to book.
Ensure you actively collect testimonials and reviews to feature on the website
Conclusion:
Everyone needs more money from their booking channels
Increase the average rate by implementing simple strategies
ROI is greater since you can achieve higher revenue by simple tweaks
What other best practices do you see in hotel websites? Let us know in the comment below