Booking abandonment and customer acquisition costs are both major challenges today for the hotel industry.
The average hotel spends about $30 on capturing a lead and over $200 on customer acquisition.
- 90% of hotel website visitors browse around and never take action
- 82% of those that do take action ends up abandoning their booking
The numbers are just staggering.
How do hotels fix it?
Why is abandonment so high in the hotel industry?
Research tells us that customers visit about 4-5 unique websites and spend 30 minutes of research on each before making an educated booking decision.
The majority of this time is spent on reading reviews.
As data shows a large percentage initiates the booking but does not complete it. They leave the hotel website to compare with other hotels and alternatives. At this point reviews, video and community engagements start to play a key role for the customers.
One part of this process that we have to look at in context with abandonment is the customer intent when they arrived at the hotel website.
And research tells us that almost 90 percent of customer intent relates to making a reservation, finding deals and specials, and looking for hotel information.
Again, hotels spend $200 on customer acquisition and 90 percent of customer intent is on point, and still, almost all of this intent is lost in the funnel.
I understand customers spend time researching, compare prices, check with their friends and peers and other things that cause them to temporarily abandon the hotel’s website.
And I understand that alternative booking channels and review sites will impact the customer’s booking decision.
But a hotel can’t just leave these numbers of abandonment on the table unless that is your intention.
What is the source of this hotel challenge?
- Online travel agencies?
- Review channels?
- Price?
- Complex booking?
- Social media?
- Technical issues?
- Lack of options?
- Annoying fees
- The hotel website is just used for research
- Other innovative alternatives (home-sharing etc.)
- Mobile trends?
- New technology
- Time and recourses
With all resources and responses, I get challenges that often appear within one or more of these categories.
Here is the deal – NONE of these is the source abandonment!
The real source of abandonment is that there is a leak in your hotel’s digital marketing funnel.
Fixing the hotel booking abandonment leak
Hotels have to stop focusing on what they can’t control.
We did see in 2018 that the #BookDirect campaign created positive momentum for hotels.
