Simple Website Fixes To Increase Direct Online Room Bookings

An increase in the number of site visits always feels good. But, the real statistic that matters is Conversion Rate- the ratio of site visits to rooms booked online. To know what visitors do on your website is more important than how do they get there. Are your site visitors booking or abandoning?

It is of utmost importance to understand why site visitors abandon a transaction in order to remove the obstacles that deter them from making bookings. You can follow these inexpensive ways to relieve customers of discomfort, encourage direct online room bookings and build loyalty in the process.

Be up front with whatever you offer

Lowering the rates may not be the option to accommodate all customers but there is another way out to address the issue. You should ensure that the rates you advertise are actually available on your website. You should either include or disclose additional fees and taxes in your hotel banner ads, promotional campaigns and emails. This a simple way to pre qualify your hotel website visitors. This way you funnel only those customers who are ready to book rooms at rates that you have listed. It will remove customer frustration while building trust at the same time.

Optimize Landing Pages

A landing page can be defined as the page on your hotel website where the users will eventually land upon clicking a piece of online advertising. Take users from your hotel ad to the ad specific landing page on your hotel website. The landing page should have a coordinating message and promotional offers to instantly reassure customers that they have landed at the right place. Further optimization of these pages can be done by giving one offer per landing page with details simply bulleted out. In the end, you should include a hard to miss call- for- action, Book Now!

Get rid of Pre-Booking Registration

It has been observed that in an attempt to gather maximum guest information the hotel websites miss the track of their top priority- driving online room bookings. Your goal should be to take the user to Book Now button faster. The guest contact information can still be captured. On your reservation confirmation page give an option to set up an account after the guest has booked the stay with your hotel. Explain them the benefits of creating an account with your hotel website. This will increase guest information submissions.

Show Room Availability Interactively

To have room for everyone is not possible for any hotel. But you can at least show the available dates. The calendar is the best tool to accomplish this task interactively. Displaying room availability in this manner will allow would be guests to view time frames they have to work with. If your website displays the harsh No Availability message even though there is only one day conflict in the request, the guests will be definitely turned off. You will miss out on those guests who could adjust dates by a day on either. Constantly receiving No Availability message sends user to the competitor websites faster.

Work On Your Website Content

Review your website content and ask yourself that whether it supports your hotel’s goal of getting more online room bookings.  Is it prompting users to Book Now?  You can even use this content clarity technique when there is a need to add fresh content as well. This way only the relevant content will be available on your hotel website.

It can be a tough job to identify the content important to customers. You should view your hotel website statistics. This way you would know the pages that guests are leaving the website from and what pages lead to a successful room bookings. If you do not have access to website statistics, go through online reviews of your recent guests. You can call those guests and ask what made their stay memorable with your hotel.  There are chances that other guests will also be attracted to those same points. Now you know what the content of your hotel website should be and where it should lead.