How to Improve Booking.com Ranking & Increase Hotel Bookings

Booking.com is an Amsterdam-based company that was founded in 1996 and focuses on vacation experience and accommodation. It has more than 400 million total visits and has emerged as a global online travel agency.

It has an extensive inventory of vacation rentals and is the most sought-after in the European continent. The platform offers information in 43 languages.

If you haven’t Listed your Property on Booking.com Learn -How to list your hotel property on Booking.com

What determines ranking on Booking.Com

Before putting in efforts to gain the top rankings on Booking.com, you need to understand the determinants of these rankings. It is the basic knowledge a hotel needs to have in order to take effective steps.

Searches are displayed on the OTA and shown to the potential guests as per their rankings. These rankings depend on how relevant each listing is to the user's requirements.

The OTA factors in multiple things such as the history of searches, current market demand, and dynamics. Additionally, how has the property been performing on the platform, is considered as well. This process enables the personalization of searches.

The following are the steps involved in a user's journey on Booking.com, and the experience gets personalized as the algorithm adapts to the changing user needs and preferences.   

• Research/Exploration: This is the initial step that involves searching for the most relevant property based on different filters. The user must add the destination, property type, dates, etc.   
• Comparing options: Once the searches are listed, the users compare different options and look for the most suitable one.   
• Booking: This step involves finalizing the property and making a booking against it for the desired dates.  
• Journey experience: This experience starts right from the exploration on the OTA, stays on the property, and stretches up till the check-out from it.   
• Feedback: This is an important step. Feedback is what makes the entire process more effective. Guest rate/rank their overall experience, right from check-in to check-out. This includes stay, services and amenities, ambiance and cleanliness, etc. This is a user testimony and helps other visitors choose the most appropriate property.

Booking.com also helps hospitality businesses gain guest insights using the Booker Insights tool. This tool helps hotels, for example, to understand the purpose of travel, devices used to book, etc.

7 Methods to Rank #1 on Booking.com

This section of the blog talks about tips and ways to improve booking.com ranking for a hotel property.

So, hotels, we suggest you bring out your diaries and start making notes because these 6 tips would definitely help you Rank #1 on Booking.com.

Some steps to rank higher on Booking.com are:

1. Leverage the Extranet tools

Booking.com Extranet is a great tool for property management on the OTA. These analytics help a hotel optimize its listing and more reservations from Booking.com.

The extranet can be used to keep the calendar and prices up to date, monitor property performance, and much more. It is a dashboard that consists of three key tools:

• Price-related dashboard: This tool helps a hotel to compare its prices with that of its close competitors. A hotel can then reflect if the prices are too high or low for the area or services offered.
• Ranking dashboard: This is a crucial tool that helps a hotel analyze its ranking and performance in comparison to other similar properties. It has multiple metrics, but the most important ones that you should focus on are:  
• Average Daily Rate - ADR is the average income earned from each booked room.   
• Conversion Rate- This is the number of people who made a booking after going through your listed property.   
• Cancellation Rate- This is the % of rooms booked and canceled in the period of the last 3 months.   
• Property Page Score- This metric will tell a hotel how attractive the property is to the visitor as per the current market conditions. 
• Analytics dashboard: This dashboard highlights how the property is performing over time. It gives real-time insights into bookings, customer behavior, and sales statistics overview. This helps a hotel realize what works for it and what does not. Activities leading to sudden booking dips and highs could be identified or traced.

Hotels should leverage the Extranet for insights that could be game-changing for the property.

2. Make your listing irresistible

The next tip is to optimize the listings based on the results of the analytics from the Extranet. The higher the conversion rates, the higher the chances that the Booking.com algorithm would show the property to guests with similar profiles.

So, for higher conversion rates, and more reservations on Booking.com, a hotel needs to make the listing very attractive, appealing, and lucrative to the visitors. This is the first step in ‘how to improve Booking.com ranking’.

Here are some tips to optimize your listings on Booking.com:

• Visually presentation: The pictures put up by the hotel should be of high quality and relevance. It’s a strong impression. Thus, make sure that you upload the most relevant and professional-looking pictures, lined up according to their usefulness and quality. This builds trust among visitors.
• Property description: Ensure to give a thorough description of the property so that visitors can make an informed decision. Also, mention your non-negotiable property or house rules, if any. You can also give additional information or tips about local attractions, etc., to make the guest’s experience better.
• SEO: The description should be search engine optimized. This means that add keywords to it that are often searched by your target audience and describe your uniqueness or services clearly, for better visibility and engagement chances.

3. Always remain updated

A hotel must ensure that it keeps its description, room availability, and prices updated on the OTA for maximum engagement and trust.

Hotels must provide availability a year in advance so that repeat guests can rebook and potential guests can make a well-planned booking. If the same is not updated, and even if there is an availability at the hotel, it will not show in the search results. This can cost hotel guests as well as potential revenue as the booking windows again start to get longer with time.

Similarly, hotels must adjust their minimum stay restrictions well in advance for maximum visibility and narrowed-down results. Listing on OTAs should be regularly updated and well-monitored for the best results. Property managers should ensure that all the OTAs the hotel has a presence on are well-managed, with inventory and prices updated as and when required.

However, since the hotel might be on multiple channels, technology can come to the rescue. Channel managers are popular property managers for OTAs. These systems automatically update inventory and prices on multiple channels.

BOTSHOT’s channel manager, ChannelSyncro, is one such solution that optimizes listings on OTAs. It manages all the channels simultaneously and ensures that hotels maximize their bookings and revenue through it. It is the perfect product for inventory and room rate management on OTAs.

4. Exercise dynamic pricing

Dynamic pricing or having different pricing strategies allows hotels to charge different room rates as per the market conditions and demand. There are hotel seasons depending upon the time of the year and divided into low, medium, and high/peak.

This is, in particular, called seasonal pricing and falls under the term dynamic pricing. Different prices are also charged according to the day of the week or just according to the number of bookings in a day.

Discounts, offers and schemes could be offered to early birds, or to the guests who book for a longer stay. This dynamic pricing allows hotels to make up for the low periods with revenue during the high seasons or simply maximize the revenue by catering to the needs of different days and seasons.

However, this pricing should be done smartly. A hotel must not go over with its prices, nor it should underquote, the prices should be in alignment with the market competition and the services and amenities offered.

The hotel also must analyze the target audience and their willingness to pay a certain amount. There should be price flooring and ceilings, accordingly.

The hotels thus need to leverage their hotel guest data to analyze the target audience and its preferences. For the study of the market, a hotel could refer to the Booking.com Opportunities Playbook, which offers market and local localized data insights. This data would help hotels to offer promotional deals and offers as per the audience preferences who generally book hotels in your area.

5. Offer a flexible cancellation policy

Another way to attract more visitors and move towards Rank #1 on Booking.com is by offering booking and cancellation flexibility. In fact, the "Free Cancellation" filter available on the OTA is becoming more popular day by day.

Thus, a hotel must offer its guests flexible cancellation policies for last-minute or well-planned changes. This enhances the guest experience and creates a positive image for the hotel. Additionally, there should be flexibility in the check-in/out timings. This again elevates the guest experience and makes them rebook the property.

6. Join programs offered by Booking.com

Booking.com offers exclusive programs to boost a hotel’s ranking on its platform. These programs are as follows:

• Genius Program: This program offers the hotel additional visibility and boosted rankings through special tagging, custom banners, and listing badges. This program requires hotels to have an open and bookable property, at least at least 3 guest reviews, and a review score of at least 7.5 out of 10. The OTA claims that on average, partners who join this program tend to increase their bookings by 29% and their revenue by 24%, with the cost of the discount accounted for.
• Preferred Partner Program: This is another program that ensures a rank boost to hotels. It requires hotels to have a performance score of at least 70% (as per the expected annual bookings and traveler demand) and a review score of at least 7 out of 10. Additionally, the hotel must offer competitive pricing as per the Performance Dashboard scale. The company claims that preferred partners receive up to 65% more page views and on average 20% more bookings.

7. Boost visibility using the offered tool

Booking.com also offers a visibility booster tool. It helps hotels gain visibility during low periods or at the time of multiple cancellations. Additionally, hotels could boost their visibility during the high or in-demand periods such as long weekends.

This is another important tool and tip for ‘how to improve Booking.com ranking’.

Conclusion

Every hotel needs to have an OTA presence in order to grow and expand. And this presence must be optimized for the best results. Thus, in order to gain the most out of the platform, a hotel must rank higher on Booking.com and maximize its bookings as well as revenue. 

The above-mentioned tips and ways of how to improve Booking.com ranking would help hotels gain greater visibility on these online travel agencies, a much-traveled bridge between the hospitality businesses and the guests/customers.