Increasing Your Hotel Sales with More Direct Bookings

Direct bookings are extremely important for increasing your hotel sales numbers. Thus, it’s in your best interest to try and drive these booking as much as possible. Today in the Southeast International Hotel Brokers blog, we delve deeper into direct booking and discuss ways that you can increase your numbers.

What are Direct Bookings?

Direct bookings are when a customer books their stay directly through you or your website. Although online travel agencies are useful, ideally you’d get all your bookings directly through your website. This way you don’t have to pay the online travel agency’s fee. That’s not to say you should cut out OTAs, but direct bookings are definitely preferable for your hotel sales numbers. Although it’s unlikely that you’ll get 100% of bookings directly, it doesn’t hurt to try and drive customers to book this way. But how do you do that?

How Can I Increase My Direct Bookings?

When it comes to best practices for direct bookings, the first thing you need to take a look at is your website. Your website should be easy to navigate, mobile-friendly, and convenient to make a reservation through. A poorly designed website will cause customers to get frustrated and refer to an online travel agency instead, decreasing your direct hotel sales. Your website should also have all the information that the guest needs. This means amenities, attractions in the area, reviews of your hotel, and much more. This way they won’t feel like they need to seek out the information elsewhere. Make sure that booking a room is extremely easy to do. You can do this by making sure there’s a “Book Now” button or something similar on every page. Then make sure the actual reservation page has a clean, user-friendly layout.

Your website isn’t your only tool for driving direct bookings. The other main consideration you should have is giving guests a good reason to book through you. This reasons usually comes in the form of rewards and loyalty points. A guest is more likely to continue booking through your website if you earn their loyalty and they get more out of it. If you don’t already have a rewards program in place, it’s more than worth looking into. A loyalty program has a lot of potential to increase your hotel sales revenue.

Contact the Hotel Sales Team at Southeast International Hotel Brokers

When it comes to hotel sales, Southeast International Hotel Brokers is the best in the business. Whether you’re buying or selling, our dedicated team of hotel brokers will make sure you have everything you need and will help you through the entire process. For more information about our services, please contact us today, or continue browsing our website.