A hotel channel manager allows properties to manage multiple online distribution channels from a single solution, Hotels can update rate and availability and receive reservations directly to its systems like PMS and CRS in real-time. Advanced channel managers provide 2-way XML connectivity with online sales channels including OTAs, GDS, metasearch, wholesalers and booking engines for seamless data transfer.
What is Hotel Booking Engine?
The Internet Booking Engine or Hotel Booking Engine is an application that allows customers to book online directly on the hotel brand website.
6 Great Types of Content for Hotel Website for Increase in Bookings
A good hotel website that is rich in content can help you to attract potential customers and influence them enough to book a room in your hotel. Good content can also improve your hotel website’s search engine ranking. Here are 6 types of great content for your hotel website that can increase bookings.
- New menu
If you have just released a new menu, you have to announce the same. Use your hotel website to allow guests to find out you are preparing new mouthwatering dishes in your in-hotel restaurant. This can provide them with a good reason to check out your online menu. It can fill them up with enough anticipation to make a reservation. It can even attract local guests who are loyal to your business and who might like to often dine at your restaurant.
- Top local attractions
Write down about the places of interest in your area, and all that the region has on offer for travelers. Sharing such information can show travelers that you are knowledgeable and assistive, and the content can also attract random people looking for those topics on Google and other search engines. You may also write about the best restaurants, walking routes, shops etc in your area.
- Upcoming events
If there are upcoming events in your region, you may cover them as well, similar to the local attractions. You can write down various details regarding the event, such as the number of people who are anticipated to attend it, how far the venue is from your hotel etc. Write down whether a special discount is being offered with the tickets.
- Holiday content
You can create content that is related to holiday events. Mention whether your hotel would be offering complementary wine on Valentine’s Day upon arrival or free dinner to moms on Mother’s Day. You may write a post about a treasure hunt that you might be hosting on Easter at your hotel or the top 5 foods to have in your in-hotel restaurant for Christmas dinner. When you create content timely around particular holidays, you can attract customers enough to turn them into your hotel guests.
- Video tour
You may also make a video tour of your own hotel property. It can transport guests straight to your hotel property via their PC / mobile screen. You can hire a professional to shoot high-quality videos that can portray your hotel with all the vivid details, lending a personal touch to the same. You may walk guests straight through the outdoor spaces, restaurants, common areas such as lounge, rooms, suites and more. All these can help customers get a bigger and better view of your hotel property.
- New feature
You may also use your hotel website to announce any new feature that you have added at your hotel, such as a redecorated restaurant, Jacuzzi baths, king-size beds in all rooms, spa facility, gym, swimming pool etc. Basically, if you have bettered your hotel in any way, let potential guests know about the same.
Content plays a huge role for traffic pulled and bookings are done on your hotel website. Get Hotel channel manager & Online Distribution.
Things to Consider Before Choosing a Hotel Channel Manager in 2019
It is necessary to have a wonderful hotel channel manager in the hotel industry. It will let you sell rooms efficiently, reduce the number of unsatisfied guests and minimize your monetary losses as well as reduce the amount of time that you waste on double bookings, under bookings and overbookings. In the absence of a channel manager, hotels need to manually update availability and inventory on every channel. Before picking a hotel channel manager in 2019, here are a few things that you need to consider.
Real-time updates
Real-time rate and availability updates are important features of any capable hotel channel manager. The channel manager of your choice must let you adjust hotel rates and room availability with convenience. It should be connectible to many booking sites. Thus, when there is booking of a room, the availability should automatically change across every distribution channel.
Channel performance report
A proper channel manager needs to offer you detailed reports on every channel. It will allow you to view how every channel is performing, what has to be fixed, the amount of money that you are making and more. You should get higher visibility on your channel distribution network, which can boost your performance, and reduce your expenses. The channel managers that are best-in-class heavily invest in cutting edge analytics and reports that are easily understandable and show revenues, reservations and occupancy for a particular time period.
Connectivity to many markets and OTAs
You should also check the way your channel manager forms connections to all your preferred markets and various OTAs. The connection established to many OTAs around the globe will let you enter your chosen markets that you supposed to be out of your reach. The process needs to be fast and easy, similar to ending a connection with an Online Travel Agency that you do not regard as important for your business. The best kind of channel managers let you use your most productive channels to advantage, and also experiment with channels that are less apparent and might help you gain access to markets that are tough to reach otherwise.
Support and training
A hotel channel manager of your choice needs to include support as well as training. In case it does not, you will be at risk of losing money and time. Without any training, you will not be able to get familiarity with a new hotel channel manager. It should help you to grasp all the particular features. The support needs to be great as well. Like any other software program, it can come with quite a few problems. When help is required, you need to be assured that it will be available right on time.
Pooled inventory
Proper channel management also needs a pooled inventory model. Make sure that there is sharing of your room inventory across every channel, instead of being manually allocated channel-by-channel. Pooled inventory makes sure that there is proper availability of rooms, so that the hotel rooms may be simultaneously promoted across every channel with no concern of overbooking.
How to Promote Your Hotel to Business Travelers?
Business travelers form one of the major groups of travelers, and this group is increasing with time. Expenses on global business travel are expected to rise by 7% by the year 2020, which means hoteliers have to go that extra mile to attract business travelers to their properties. Most of the business trippers like to stay in hotels for face-to-face and corporate meetings. The opportunities for business expansion are very high, which has led to a rise in more room reservations, choosing from amazing foods and more. Here are some tips on how to promote your hotel property to business travelers.
Use social media platforms
The internet is being used too much these days, and there is high demand for social media channels among vacationers as well as among business travelers. They make use of social media platforms to interact with business experts, update themselves on the latest trends in business and find out what their competitors are doing. You can post ads on Face book, YouTube and other websites to offer multi-media experiences to business trippers. LinkedIn is another robust platform that you can use to reach out to business travelers.
Offer them a wide variety of dishes
Business travelers tend to work for more time while traveling, and do not get the time to choose from the available food options in hotels. They like to choose whatever is offered to them. If you offer them the best foods, they will be impressed. It is a good idea to offer them healthy menu items, and provide them with a variety of healthy snacks such as fruits, yogurt, cereal, self-serve toast etc. Offer them vegan meals and gluten-free foods. Ask them whether they suffer from any food allergy, and offer them meals accordingly, so that they can stay fit and healthy.
Offer real-time services
For business trippers, time is something precious. They often spend much time in moving from place to place – such as shuttles, taxis, airport, home etc – before they arrive for rest or check in or to run for their following appointment. You can keep them satisfied with a fast process, like mobile / online check-in, and gathering all the important data and payment processing before guests arrive. You should also ensure a flexible policy for business travelers’ check-out and check-in times, to let them avoid delays in schedule, making life more convenient and ensuring brand loyalty.
Running loyalty programs
Hotels operate loyalty programs that can encourage guests to come back often. These types of programs can let you boost your brand reputation and value in the market. A flexible loyalty program can help hotel groups as well as independent properties to draw in business trippers, and retain repeat business by providing business travelers with the things that they appreciate – such as discounted stays and free nights.
Try to offer amenities that can make trips less tiring for business guests – such as discounted spa services, complimentary beverages and free transportation services. Loyalty programs can drawn in corporate guests very well, and also collect guest information that can be used further to provide them with more personalized services.
Online travel trends in USA
It’s been a decade since the travel industry has turned around from the global recession. The past 10 years marks the story of remarkable resilience shown by the hoteliers. From accommodation sharing to rate comparison to social selling to travel demand surge – this has been a period of challenges, disruptions and growth.
Fueled by digital innovation, the shift to online travel booking has emerged as a global trend. In 2009, Expedia and Booking – two of world’s biggest OTAs processed around $15 billion in gross bookings. In 2018, they reported gross global bookings of $99 billion and $92 billion, respectively. From $15 billion to $191 billion – this astonishing 1200% increase reflects the change in traveler’s booking behavior and preference.
According to a survey by Wex on US travelers’ booking behavior and preferences ranging in age from 18 to 70, typically 67% of respondents book their travel online with 73% of Gen Z and 76% of Millennial travelers doing so. The online travel market in US, although near saturation, has been outpacing the overall market and now amounts to US$103 billion. While OTAs are expected to control 41% market share in 2020, Expedia and Booking Holdings continue to dominate in the U.S., with the two collectively representing 92% of the OTA market. In this post we take a deep dive into OTAs in the region who are playing vital role in shaping the digital travel.
In 2018, 350 million room-nights were booked through Expedia, making hotel reservations its biggest source of revenue. Following the merchant revenue model, the company buys up a large number of hotel rooms at a lower rate and receives booking payments from the customer. Through a network of branded travel booking sites, including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, Wotif, Egencia, Vrbo along with the metasearch platform Trivago, the group has been able to drive a loyal user base. The Expedia platform had over 1 million properties (including 370,000 of HomeAway vacation rentals) with its site receiving 675 million monthly site visits and its mobile app being one of the most popular one across platforms.
For listed hotels, the company provides an easy-to-use console Expedia Group Partner Central to manage their properties, join promotions and packages to attract travelers, and maximise revenues.
Egencia is the business travel management service offering accommodation, flights, activities, and more to businesses who wish to leverage their services to find the best deals for travelers.
Everyday over 1.5 million room-nights are booked on Booking Holdings platform making it the largest online travel agency in the world, and has a portfolio of popular OTAs, including Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda and Kayak. Booking.com, its flagship brand largely works on the agency model acting as agents on behalf of accommodation providers. Hotels pay the OTAs once the booking has been paid in full by the guests. Its loyalty reward system called Genius provides members with discounts and rewards which increase as the member books more through the site. Booking.com has been steadily making inroads in the US market which has been historically dominated by Expedia.
Listing on Booking.com is a rather simple process. Accommodation providers need to visit the registration page and complete the instructions. It’s important to select the property type to ensure right category listing. The commission-based service even offers 24/7 multilingual assistance and markets your property on various search engines. Booking.com provides its client properties a Visibility Dashboard with the relevant data to track and improve your visibility in the search results. Hotels can also take advantage of its Genius and Preferred Partner Programme for better visibility.
Over the last couple of years, Airbnb has emerged as a preferred channel for independent and boutique hotels. In fact, properties listed as boutique hotels, bed and breakfasts, and other hospitality venues like hostels and resorts have grown by 152 percent in the last one year. The platform has also emerged as a preferred option for last-minute bookers, which is expected to get further boost following its acquisition of HotelTonight and cross-promotion across these channels. Since last year, Airbnb has been highlighting hotels more prominently on its website and introduced a loyalty program. Earlier this year, the company has eliminated guest fee on new hotel listings making it more competitive with traditional OTAs. To list their properties on Airbnb, hotels need to match guidelines set by the channel like:
- Vibrant common gathering spaces / events
- Guest rooms with personal touches that are individually unique and/or local in design
- High-quality photos on the listing page that showcase the design of the property and what guests can expect
- Accessibility features that are helpful to guests with limited mobility
A part of Expedia group, Hotels.com is a strong brand available across 85 local websites in 35 languages. The channel receives over 60 million unique visitors per month. It’s loyalty program Hotels.com® Rewards has over 15 million members. With a fully responsive mobile site and mobile app with over 50 million downloads to date, customers can book on the go with access to 20,000 last minute deals. To list a property, hoteliers need to apply through Expedia Partner Central (EPC). As part of the Expedia group, the listing gets featured across all Expedia sites including Orbitz.com, Expedia.com, and Travelocity.
How to Increase Bookings from Hotel Booking Website?
These days, it is important for hospitality businesses to have a website of their own. Whether you have a small hotel in a quiet town in the country or running an independent hotel or managing hotel chains in some of the best destinations across the world, you have to know how to develop and design a hotel website that grabs the attention of your targeted market and makes travelers interested enough to drive bookings. When you are building a website for your hotel property, here are some important factors that you have to take into account.
Brand
You would like your website visitors to keep your hotel brand in consideration. For this reason, you have to consistently showcase your brand through your whole website. A lively color scheme and logo will let you establish a wonderful identity and let you associate with your target audience and establish a personal relationship.
Target market
Your site’s features have to be appealing to the wants and needs of your target market. In case your hotel is targeted at luxury vacationers, you have to post lovely images of the fantastic amenities in your hotel property. Post content that can be attractive to your audience. If you like to draw travelers who are from the millennial generation, your photos have to feature active, young adults who enjoy your property completely.
Booking form
Guests have to make the booking experience on your site a simple experience. This is the reason you have to spend on a hotel reservation engine that can be used easily and which also lets you boost conversions. It is also essential that you integrate a major call-to-action message such as “Book Now” to grab the attention of users.
SEO plans
There is no point to spend on a new site in case it cannot be found on the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Make sure that your website content is properly optimized to rank for keywords that are relevant and is a vital factor in drawing traffic. Your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plans are necessary to consider.
Site speed
Your website has to load fully and quickly in just a few seconds. Otherwise, your hotel can be at risk of losing potential guests to competitors. Make sure that your hotel site is designed to be fast loading. Keep in mind that even a delay of 2 – 3 seconds can make users impatient enough to go to the website of your competitors and opt for whatever they have on offer, even if it means opting for a more expensive deal.
Mobile capabilities
You require a website design that is responsive, and your hotel site builder has to assist you in achieving the same. A responsively designed hotel site can let your users navigate easily to your site – whether they use a mobile device or a desktop. The booking engine for your hotel should also accept mobile reservations, given that more and more travelers are making bookings with mobile devices. It can enhance the experience of users, and aid your SEO efforts.
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Is Your Hotel Website ADA-Compliant
ADA or The Americans with Disabilities Act demands that every business need to make sure that customers can get access to the same services, irrespective of how physically capable they are. The Government is taking active steps to make sure that ADA-accessibility extends not only to offline businesses but also to online properties like mobile apps and websites. If you have a hotel website, you have to make sure that it is ADA-compliant, or you could be staring at trouble before long.
Focus on the text
Your website should have text that can be resized easily. Make sure that there is a high-contrast mode option which can make it easier for slightly vision impaired visitors to read the text. The site should have a text-only option, and all the functionalities need to be accessible via a keyboard for guests with mobility problems. Ensure that there is minimal formatting for the text. Those who experience problems in seeing might be incapable of reading colored text on colored backgrounds or text that is especially small in size. It is best for you to adhere to a common, large-sized font with dark colored text on white background.
Look at the photos and images
The photos must have proper text descriptions. Your social marketing strategies and website videos should comprise of transcripts and audio descriptions for all those who are hearing impaired. There is a text-based analog for all the visual media. The images must have “alt” text for content description. Suitable descriptive text must be added to videos. You can use screen reader software to describe your website images.
Offer accessibility information all through the site
Throughout your website, you have to feature accessibility information. Say a disabled traveler wants to know whether she can arrive and reach his room, get inside, take a shower and sleep and move about without problems, your hotel website should make all the details easily accessible. You have to include full information about how his experience with your hotel property would be upon arrival. You have to describe every space in your hotel, as well as how it would be like to move to and from each space. Mention all possible obstacles along your way, and also specify any inaccessible area.
Keep in mind that room details are not enough. Your hotel site needs to spot as well as describe every accessible area of your property in complete detail – such as the common spaces, the pathways from and to these spaces all through the hotel, the on-site amenities and more. There can be lawsuits in the absence of all these details. Due to this reason, hotel sites have to include entire accessibility content for every area of the property.
After you make all such changes to your hotel website to satisfy ADA guidelines, get your site evaluated by a web development firm that is familiar with all the issues of ADA compliance. Make sure that visitors using screen readers and other assistive technologies can fully access your website content.
Google Hotel Ads – Beginner’s Guide to Increase Bookings
The huge reach of the internet and social networking websites have changed how people view the world about them. Many travelers are using the World Wide Web and search engines such as Google to know where they can go for their next vacation and which hotel they can stay in. Many of them begin the booking process only after they carry out a Google search. As a hotelier, you have to use SEO best practices in order to boost your chances to get a high ranking on the SERPs. You can also use Google Hotel Ads for proper marketing of your hotel property. Google has undergone an evolution over time and there is a change in how hotels show up in its search results. If you are a beginner, find out how you can use Google Hotel Ads to increase your hotel bookings.
Register for Business View
For people across the world who use the Google search engine for almost every query, Google Street View has turned into an expectation. These days, businesses – including hotels as well as others in the hospitality industry – the Google Business View Tool can be used for displaying the insides of properties.
Capture high-quality videos and photographs
With Google Hotel Ads, you can get the ability to regulate which things show up under your search results. As a matter of fact, you may change the photos that get displayed whenever a user makes a search for a property similar to yours. Keep in mind that Google has very high standards, so that people using it for search queries can enjoy the best information and data. If you wish to feature photos of the insides of your hotel, and add the same into Google Hotel ads that you publish, you would have to post videos and photos in high-resolution and superior quality. The photos have to show your property in full focus, typically in natural light and minus too many filters. The images have to be a minimum of 14MP or higher, so as to be regarded by Google as high-quality. You may also introduce interactive tours into the ad display section.
Advertise special features and offers
While creating an ad copy, you would of course have to highlight all the special features that make your hotel property special and outstanding from the others. Also mention any discounts that you would like to offer. Mention any promo codes or discounts that you are running at present. In case you have recently constructed a new suit or room at your hotel, your description needs to feature that along with photographs of the same in high-resolution.
Use the Google Ad Preview Tool
The Ad Preview Tool from Google is a great way to track your competition. It can help you to confirm whether or not your ads are performing the best, or as expected. You may use particular keywords to check the ads and ensure that these are giving the best results. You need to find out how exactly your ads are showing up before vacationers who are searching for a hotel property similar to yours.
Morocco Enjoys A Positive Year for Travel
Morocco, considered as the gateway to Africa, is a country offering heritage cities, sprawling mountain ranges, golden deserts and warm hospitality. The country has been experiencing a surge in tourism over the last few years and continues to feature in the bucket list of many travelers.
Between 2000 and 2018, Morocco has averaged an annual growth of 6 percent in tourism arrivals, which is two points higher than global tourism growth. In 2018 itself, Morocco received 12.3 million tourists, up 8% from the previous year. Marrakech, the most visited Moroccan city, recorded over 2.4 million tourist arrivals from January to November, in addition to 2.6 million scheduled hotel stays through the end of 2018.
These figures are a testimony to Morocco’s growing prominence as a major tourist destination as well as the contribution of tourism revenue towards the country’s GDP. Research studies show that this growth is partly due to the rise of internet and mobile bookings, allowing people from far off places to be able to research, compare and make flight and hotel bookings online – easily and conveniently.
While the traditional offline booking channels continue to remain strong, the growth of online sales channels and travel intermediaries have been phenomenal over the last few years. So much so that online and offline booking numbers now have very similar levels of value sales. This growth, however, has not been overnight and has various factors that led to this change.
Over time, domestic tourism has received a major boost, especially with the introduction of secure online payments. Further, OTAs and other sales channels have been offering promotions and discounts on online bookings, which is proving to be attractive for travellers. Not only has this impacted domestic tourism – it has led to a rise in international tourists who are now making a beeline for Morocco to experience its rich culture and ornate architecture.
With the Government chipping in to increase tourism by relaxing visa requirements for certain countries, Morocco witnessed an impressive ten-fold increase in Chinese tourist arrivals over the last three years – from 10,000 in 2015 to nearly 180,000 last year.
Further, the rapid development in mobile technology and popularity of social media platforms has literally put travel research and booking into the hands of people. Not only can travelers search and book, travel suppliers too can advertise on these platforms to get in front of potential guests and generate online bookings by providing a defined customer journey through various touchpoints.
With increasing competition and price sensitive guests, hoteliers need to ensure they are visible on multiple OTAs and metasearch channels as well as keep their brand website updated to be able to achieve maximum occupancy and meet revenue targets. Hence, knowing the right channels that bring business to your city is a key and being connected to them is very important for your online sales strategy. To find out how you can improve online revenue, contact us today and speak to our connectivity advisor – https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ
*source- mordorintelligence, moroccoworldnews