Hotel Booking Engine is a tool that allows direct reservations to be made for the property. With the resurgence of direct bookings, hotels are now using their websites as an engine to generate commission-free bookings.
Hotel booking engines offer lower costs and promote brand promotion. Your hotel website represents your property better than any OTA can. Hence, the popularity of booking engines has increased over these years.
The next step is to choose the right booking engine provider for your hotel website. For those who are confused as to which one to choose among the various options, we have here to help you! Here, we will discuss the 10 factors you need to consider while choosing the right booking engine provider.
10 Factors To Consider While Choosing A Booking Engine Provider
Choosing a booking engine can make or break your hotel. A seamless booking experience is essential for converting leads into clients. Without that conversion, your hotel business will get adversely affected. With these factors in mind, you will surely make the right choice!
1. Connectivity To Channels
The most important factor to consider it the ability of the booking engine to connect various channels with each other. Your hotel website is not the only digital channel. Along with it, a hotel has several other channels such as social media handles.
It is important to have a booking engine that can allow the hotelier to view the prices and availability of rooms at one place. You can easily make changes and rectify errors on one platform.
2. Flexibility
A hotel booking engine should be flexible. It should support all the languages your guest speak; It should allow unlimited options to create room types, tariff, special offers and promos; provide online voucher redemption etc. It should offer all the features you need and also allow you to make changes according to your condition.
3. Mobile Friendly
Most of the internet users are now on mobile. You need to have a booking engine that is optimized for mobile phones. The booking engine provider should offer a system that works for mobiles, tables, laptop and desktop.
4. Promoting Direct Bookings.
Your Booking Engine Provider should be an engine that helps with direct bookings. The very aim of a booking engine is to make hotel website booking seamless. It is a channel with the lowest cost per acquisition (CPA).
There are a variety of tactics a hotel booking engine can provide for increasing direct booking, such as providing a compelling way to encourage customers to book directly rather than through OTAs.
5. Customer Service And Reporting
There is either fabulous customer service or there is no customer service. Your booking engine provider should provide great customer service and redress all the issues. It should resolve the guest’s and the hotelier’s grievances professional and quickly.
They should also provide you with reports that give an accurate picture of your hotel business. These reports show booking patterns that are essential for formulating hotel revenue and hotel marketing strategies.
6. Marketing Assistance
A booking engine that provides additional services such as marketing and design are great assets for your hotel. Digital marketing services can increase the traffic to your hotel website and booking engine.
Both should be integrated to generate maximum revenue. A booking engine provider that provides a marketing team that helps you with marketing campaigns on Facebook, Google and other social media sites.
7. Dedicated Team Of Experts
Hotel booking engines offer technological services to the hospitality industry. Hence, it should have experts from both the sides. Booking engine services need expertise from both the tech industry and the hospitality industry. The technology should serve the hotel’s goals - increase in customers, increase in revenue and ultimately, increase in profitability.
8. Customer Relationship Management
Customer Relationship Management is an important aspect in any business. To make your business viable, you should try to build a strong relationship with your clients. CRM is all about considering every segment of customer as an individual and targeting them accordingly.
Your booking engine provider should offer you something more than a booking engine. It should facilitate customer relationship management. You booking engine should allow you to set different rates for different segments such as corporates, and events booking. These features will help you built better relationship with the guests.
9. The Type Of Clients
In theory, a good booking engine is flexible and scalable, catering to different room types. However, you will need to check the portfolio of your booking engine provider, and find out which type of properties they usually deal with.
For example, if they cater to only hotels, and you own a homestay, it is better to look for other options. If they cater to a wider selection of properties, or specializes in homestays, then nothing like it.
10. Innovation And Preparing For The Future
As a hotelier, being prepared for today is not enough. You need to prepared for next few years at least. The hospitality industry in unpredictable, and your hotel needs to be resilient enough to keep track of all the trends. Your booking engine should help you keep track of all the trends and also help you keep updating based on the various changes.
Keeping these factors in mind, you will be able to select the best booking engine provider for your hotel. Read our blogs to know more about the hospitality industry.