Every hotel that wants to hold on to and grow its direct bookings is going to need a booking engine.
A booking engine enables a hotel to accept direct bookings online through its official website. And as travelers increasingly book their hotels online, having a booking engine will make all the difference between staying competitive and giving up a growing amount of direct business.
Not just any old booking engine will do, however. A main reason why OTAs have been so successful at capturing online bookings is that their booking pages are optimized for converting users. To compete with the OTAs, then, hotels will need to use equally optimized booking-engine technology.
So we’ll say it again. Every hotel that wants direct bookings needs a booking engine. And every competitive hotel booking engine will be optimized for conversion by facilitating a simple, seamless, and secure booking experience for travelers.
Here are three more key features to look for in a hotel booking engine:
#1 Integration with hotel metasearch sites
Why it’s important: Those who’ve had the chance to attend one of our webinars will be familiar with the following statistic: One traveler out of two uses metasearch when searching for hotels to book online. A recent Phocuswright report revealed that 50% of US online hotel bookers completed a hotel booking on or through a metasearch site at least once in the past year.
When we single out millennial travelers, a demographic that continues to increase its travel spending and influence on travel trends, the percentage of travelers who go through a metasearch site to book their hotels online is higher still at 63%.
The takeaway: We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: The direct booking journey has moved to metasearch. To stay competitive and tap into this direct business potential, hotels will need a booking engine that’s integrated with top hotel metasearch sites so that they can advertise their direct rates on these high-potential channels.
