The guest’s road from your hotel marketing campaigns, to your website and finally to online booking is a delicate, razors’ edge journey filled with several opportunities for the customer to bounce, turn back, and never return.
However, many hoteliers assume a booking is guaranteed once a visitor is on the website and ready to buy. But, beware. There is a dangerous “chasm” between your hotel website and your booking engine, where potential guests can likely ‘fall off” if you’re not cautious.
Here are the most common ways to lose potential guests transitioning from your Website to your booking engine:
#1: Lack of Personalization
Personalization is a big industry buzz word right now. But cutting through all the hype, the one place where personalization can truly make an immediate impact is on your direct website.
When your hotel website and booking engine are integrated by one provider, personalized web experiences can be created instantly and dynamically. You can show gated and loyalty rates to recognized members of any ‘closed group’ your hotel wants to create.
Here are a few more examples:
• When a guest from Argentina visits your website and moves into the booking engine, your website can automatically pass the user’s location and localize room rates in to the guest’s native currency.
• A past guest (“Alex” in this case) revisits your website after checking dates a week before. You can now present dynamic rate promos only available to loyal past guests. Check out this example from our client, Cassa Times Square NYC:
• Your website tracks user behavior and auto-configures the booking engine with images and messages relevant to that demographic (family vs business traveler).
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