There is one thing that always ensures bookings – brand awareness. Big hotel chains have no issues with it. Everybody knows their names, as they have huge budgets dedicated to their employer branding and hundreds of people working on their visibility. But how can small hotels fight the big brands? What can you do as a smaller business owner to receive bookings? Let’s look at some of the best tools you can use as well as general concepts that can help in the process.
Online Travel Agencies and Channel Managers
First and most importantly, make sure you are connected to at least one Online Travel Agency. Working with booking platforms is the ideal solution for smaller hotels. While usually, the large brands are on the first pages of the search, all it takes is for a person to choose certain filters and your hotel can get all the visibility it needs. The main goal of those websites is not so much advertising hotel chains as it is giving travellers a choice by placing all of relevant hotels in one, easy to navigate place.
There are hundreds of OTA brands you can choose from, starting from the monopolists on the market – Booking.com and Expedia, to those dedicated to certain countries like Hotelgenio for Spain or Webjet for Australia. And if you are worried about the commission, there is actually a platform that does not use it – the Dutch website Bidroom.com.
After you connect your hotel to an OTA, it is advised that you use a channel manager. This way you do not risk overbooking your property or confusing your guests by offering them rooms that are no longer available. There is a wide variety of options you can choose from, like Cloudbeds or Cubilis, so you will surely find one that best suits your needs.
Online Booking Buttons
If you want more direct bookings, you have to make the online bookings available for guests entering your website. It might seem obvious, but many hotels seem to forget that phone calls and emails are no longer the number one way of making reservations. Your guests want to make the booking quickly and without hassle, preferably on the same website you display your rooms on. They do not want to switch from one page to another in search for your contact details. It has to be as intuitive and easy as possible.
