A very useful exercise which all hoteliers should be doing on a regular basis is searching for their hotel brand name online and monitoring those results. With so many travel websites, it may seem like an arduous task but it doesn’t have to be. If the responsibility is shared across staff members in your hotel the task will become less daunting and you’ll be more effective at spotting inconsistencies and mistakes.
When was the last time you searched for your hotel on OTA sites?
When you find your listing, are you happy with how your hotel is being represented?
Here are some crucial details you should look out for:
- Rate – It only takes a few minutes to spot check a few dates to ensure the rate is showing correctly. It is well known that OTA’s can manipulate rates for their benefit by taking a hit on their own commission levels, however, this causes rate disparities and can negatively impact business for your own direct channel.
- Close Outs – Make sure that your peak dates and close out dates are being managed correctly; on key dates, only your direct website should have availability.
- Images – Ensure all your current images are being displayed with up-to-date branding
- Room Types – Some sites will change a room type name, for example, they might call a standard room a ‘deluxe’ room, or they may be selling a room type that you had previously requested to be removed. It’s very important to have consistency with how you phrase room types from a consumer’s perspective.
- Hotel Description – Ensure that all the information on display is accurate. More importantly, make sure you keep the description different to the content on your own website. Otherwise you can be penalised for duplicate content by Google. Ideally, you have a description which you share with all your OTA’s and a separate, more detailed version which you keep for your own website.
Monitor Your Online identity
Another key factor to monitor is which sites your hotel is appearing on. It is useful to become familiar with which wholesalers are supplying which sites especially on Metasearch sites such as Kayak and TripAdvisor, as this is where many rate issues occur for hotels.
