Sure, every hotel manager would like to be highly rated on TripAdvisor and be the #1 property in their area. But what most hotels really crave is more direct bookings, and to pay less commission fees to OTAs.
That’s the position the Malolo B&B was in last year. The 5 star ratings are terrific, and the B&B leveraged the comments in their marketing, but the OTA commissions still hurt. After launching their Vizlly website, Malolo saw a dramatic shift in the ratio of OTA to direct bookings – now, 40% of the business comes from direct bookings (vs. 20% before), while dependence on OTAs has decreased to 60%. When you consider the reduced commissions that the Malolo is now paying to OTAs, that’s a significant amount of money saved.
Are you getting the most from your website? Here are a few tips you can follow that could help you increase direct bookings for your property:
- Integrate with your booking engine
Whether you’re in the process of selecting a booking engine or you don’t have one and you need a solution, Vizlly can help.
Vizlly has been designed to work with any booking engine, so you have a few options. Representation companies have booking engines that are driven from their Central Reservation System (CRS). If you have a representation company, you should reach out to them first and see which booking engine they use.
The persistent booking widget on every page of your Vizlly site makes it easy for travel shoppers to book. But first you need to enable the booking widget, by integrating your Internet Booking Engine with your Vizlly website.
- Track special offer success
There are other benefits to the integration between Vizlly and Malolo’s booking engine. The B&B is leveraging Vizlly Analytics to understand what travel shoppers want and do some target marketing. As owner Davis Alaga explains, “We can create offers and track each of those services clearly in the back end. With the marriage between [our booking engine tool] and Vizlly, we can build, based on statistics, what the travel customer actually wants.”
When you create an Offer Story in Vizlly, get creative! Try out different ideas to target different types of travel shoppers. As you track your success, you’ll learn which offers perform the best for your property, and can start creating more similar high-performing offers.
Special offers are one of the things travel shoppers crave most, and when you make them available through your website (or Facebook page) you’re giving travel shoppers a compelling reason to book directly, instead of through an OTA.
- Encourage booking on any device
Malolo B&B doesn’t give travel shoppers any reason to leave their website to make a booking. Not only does the savvy B&B promote special offers and integrate seamlessly with their booking engine, they make booking easy no matter what device their website visitor is using.
Thanks to one of Vizlly’s responsive website designs, Malolo’s website looks great and encourages travelers to book using their smartphone, tablet or desktop computer. Learn how to launch your mobile optimized Vizlly website.
- Access the knowledge of your Success Coach
Now that you’ve learned a few of the tips for how Malolo B&B increased direct bookings and paid less OTA commissions, you’re ready to start implementing them for yourself.
Your dedicated Success Coach is here to help you strategize and implement the Vizlly features that can help you drive more direct bookings. Need a hand? Get in touch success@leonardo.com
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