While progress is always seen as a positive, every changing trend in the hospitality industry makes business slightly more complicated for your hotel, with regards to distribution in particular.
As travellers become more savvy and demanding, and more intermediaries such as online travel agents (OTAs) enter the field, your hotel must fight a more complex challenge to achieve the right mix of direct and third-party bookings.
An economic downturn, especially in Europe, has only highlighted this by forcing hotels to expand their networks.
It’s important to combat these challenges in a strategic manner, for the sake of revenue and the potential profitability of the property.
Here’s what hotels need to take note of…
Hotel Challenge #1: There is no uniform approach to optimise distribution
With the huge amount of interconnected interactions between guests, hotels and travel sites, along with the diversity of travellers, it’s impossible to expect a blanket method of distributing rooms to be successful. What works on one channel, or in one region, may not work on another.
Often it’s the type of trip that’s being taken which is the catalyst for the channel a traveller uses. This makes it very hard for hotels to determine a definitive answer to what is successful or what is the most cost-effective approach when distributing their rooms.
SiteMinder’s tip for overcoming this challenge:
It’s important to implement proper tracking and measurement strategies. Know where your guests are coming from and how much it is costing you to acquire them. You should also research what influences travellers the most when booking a room at your hotel to identify how you can improve all your channels.
You can do this easily if you have a channel manager or booking engine to produce accurate reports for you. Over time you will discover how to balance the channels where the majority of your customers come from, and your most cost-effective channel. Hopefully they’re the same one!
