Thinking of placing a price comparison on your hotel website? We look at the unexpected Do’s and Don’ts of the price comparison.
The advent of the internet has simultaneously democratised and demolished the concept of the traditional retail model. Products, once differentiated by the distance between consumer and retailer, are now available to anyone anywhere at the click of a mouse button. Customers were once willing to pay twice as much just to travel half as far for their products – an unthinkable concept in today’s global marketplace where products are available online from all over the world to the lowest bidder.
The accessibility of this e-commerce revolution has permeated spending behaviour in all industries – electricity providers, pizza deliveries, health insurance, used cars and travel – it’s never been easier for the bottom dollar bargain hunter to browse and buy the very cheapest offering from almost anywhere. Nowhere is this truer than in the travel space, in fact it’s given birth to a multi-billion dollar industry of online resellers and middle-men.
But unlike the Wild West-esque retail landscapes of eBay, Alibaba and Amazon, where an authentic product may be available many times cheaper than its brand.com, the hotel industry has won itself a respectable order and control of its inventory under the protection of rate parity. Despite this, the retail perception persists and permeates the hospitality industry, with many consumers mistakenly believing that the resellers offer the cheaper deal. Many hoteliers have seen success in combating this misconception by turning their rate parity agreements into a customer-facing sales weapon – publicly comparing their direct price against that of their online resellers. By proactively educating these price sensitive customers, who are often experts in comparison shopping, the hotels are removing the urge to visit OTA websites to compare prices.
Whilst this tactic sounds simple in theory, knowing where and when to display a price comparison is crucial to make sure that it is working for your hotel, rather than against it.
Understanding the Customer Journey
Choosing to book a hotel is no hastily made decision. A holiday is generally considered somewhat of a luxury purchase and as such, guests spend a large amount of time meticulously researching and deliberating on where to book and where to get the best price. The most important opportunity for the hotelier to influence this decision is via the hotel website – a chance to turn curious browsers into direct bookers. This change is not a simple flip of a mental switch though – the customer journey through your website is a step-by-step mental process, each phase containing its own challenges and opportunities. Two of these closely linked but fundamentally different phases of the customer journey are the Exploration and Decision phases.
Why not on the website?
In the past year, many booking engines have started to offer price check solutions that can be placed on both your hotel website and booking engine. Whilst on the surface this may sound like a trivial difference in placements, in practice it is far more beneficial to place the price comparison on your booking engine – placing one on your website can only lead to confusion.
