How to increase Hotel Bookings: Complete Guide

Many hoteliers want to increase their hotel revenue to lower their rates beyond a certain extent, but this strategy won’t reap significant rewards in the long run.

Although guests get rooms at discounted prices, which may mean that you sell more rooms on a given day, in the end, you have reduced revenue per room.

Lowering your rates doesn’t send a good signal to guests as they might question the quality of your hotel services. Hence, it negatively affects your hotel’s reputation.

An increasing number of hotel bookings is important because of the following reasons-

• When you get direct bookings from your website, you reduce your reliance on OTAs and retain a larger revenue share.
• A higher number of bookings means guests trust your services and you have a good reputation in the market. When satisfied guests leave positive reviews about your hotel, you will get more future guests.
• You get a competitive edge in the industry when guests come to you and not your competitors.

6 Tried and tested strategies you should follow to increase hotel bookings

1. Invest in SEO optimized website

A website is important for your hotel because it reflects the face of your business. It acts as an interface between the business and the guests. Having a website can’t change your hospitality game unless you optimize it for search engines.

Doing on-page optimization for a website involves making it optimized for search engine by tweaking elements such as title, meta description, and content. When your hotel website ranks at the top of SERP, it receives high-quality backlinks from authoritative and credible sites.

To optimize content for search engines, start publishing compelling blogs on your website. Turn your website into a valuable resource so that travelers become ready to book accommodation on the go.

More importantly, you can update your hotel’s website with the latest events and enticing offers/discounts that your potential guests should know about.

You can even add video content on your website to WOW your guests or even showcase a virtual tour of your hotel to involve guests in “try before you buy” experiences.

At the same time, you should ensure that your hotel website is functionally effective, loads fast, is secure, and provides a consistent experience across all devices.

But you don’t need to worry about all such technicalities as BOTSHOT’s smart website builder provides you with a lucrative and SEO-ready website that drives direct bookings for your hotel’s business.

Having a seamless integration of a website builder with a booking engine, you can have better control over the revenue. And there will be no commission cuts out of your revenue as the guests can directly book a room or make a reservation for experiences.

2. Get more exposure through social media

Pushing yourself out on social media is another strategy to get more direct bookings. For that, create a social media marketing strategy that starts with knowing your ideal customers, finding their pain points, and then creating content on topics that resonate with them.

Then choose the platform where your potential guests hang out such as Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Once you choose the platform, create content consistently on that so that you can build a community, engage with your audience, and build brand awareness.

You can enhance audience engagement by incorporating storytelling techniques.

By sharing stories about your hotel, your staff, and the amenities that make you stand out, the audience can relate to your content. Stick with a consistent brand tone across all platforms so that travelers can recognize you.

The other thing is to show a HUMAN face in your reels or posts because travelers want to connect with real people and adding human faces in your content perform well compared to stock images and videos.

The other way is to collaborate with travel influencers and ask them to promote your offerings on their social media feed. Make sure that the influencers you choose should have an engaged community fan.

You can even use branded hashtags for your property to build relationships with the audience and ask them to share their photos by mentioning your brand name.

Let's understand how Leela Palace, a luxury hotel, makes the most out of Instagram. The Leela Palace has an optimized Instagram profile where they added highlights on everything including offers, celebrations, experiences they provide, and awards they won. 

They post content consistently on this platform about how they provide authentic luxury experiences to their guests through its beautiful creatives.

3. Send targeted marketing campaigns to guests

The other way to generate hotel bookings is by sending personalized e-mail campaigns to guests. 

You can personalize their experience through one approach – guest segmentation. One way to segment your guests is by analyzing their booking history and preferences. Your marketing campaigns become successful when you know what your guest preferences are. 

You can intrigue guests by creating customized offers, and packages and sharing exclusive tips that help them plan a stay at your accommodation. 

To gather guest data, surveys are one of the best ways to collect guest details at a granular level such as their age, preferences, booking history, etc.

Or else you can run retargeting ads for visitors who have already visited your site but didn’t take action. These campaigns can convert those interested customers into future guests and hence you can boost your hotel revenue.

To ease your marketing efforts, you can send personalized campaigns (e-mail/WhatsApp message) to the right target audience at the right time using eMARK-IT (marketing automation software for hoteliers).

This way, you can promote your property and other services online by sharing exciting discounts with your guests.

4. Make your brand shine on OTAs

Apart from relying on direct bookings, you can list your property on OTAs such as booking.com and Expedia. These are just a few, but you can increase your online exposure by getting your name out there on various OTAs.

One recent survey found that nearly 70% of respondents believe that booking a stay through OTA is more feasible for themas OTAs offer a simple booking experience at cost-effective rates.

To manage your room inventory information and update the prices across OTAs, you need to invest in PMS which has a seamless integration with a channel manager.

When it comes to listing a hotel on OTAs or opting for direct bookings, you should always go for sweet spots and leverage the billboard effect strategy.

Being active on OTA is important in this competitive world, even if the potential guest doesn’t book a stay through OTA, they can get to know about your brand.That’s the power of OTAs.

OTAs widen your property’s reach and allow guests to discover your property. While listing your hotel on OTA, include necessary details about the property such as amenities, location, and other contact information.

5. Positive reviews drive more bookings

You might be putting a lot of effort and money into spreading positive word of mouth about your hotel. A cost-effective way to market your hotel without spending a dime is by asking your guests to leave positive reviews about your hotel and what their stay experience looks like.

Giving attention to positive reviews and not responding to negative reviews can break your hospitality game. Reviews matter a lot and research studies support this.

As per TripAdvisor, 93% of guests read reviews first before booking a hotel online. While 70% of people go through at least 6-10 online reviews before making a booking.The more positive reviews you get about your hotel, the more it enhances your hotel’s reputation. 

That’s why it’s super important for you to ask your guests for feedback or request them to leave reviews on third-party sites, websites, or social media pages. In return, you can offer them a discount on planning their next stay. 

However, managing guest feedback using the traditional paper-based form is a time-consuming chore, so hotel owners need to automate their feedback process and save guest's time. You can send surveys to guests at any stage of their journey. 

6. Personalization drives repeat bookings

Modern travelers want personalized experiences, and they prefer choosing hotels/resorts that provide a unique and distinctive feel to them. Whether it’s in the form of eco-friendly accommodation or using smart room technology, guests adore such things. 

Between increasing competition and ever-evolving guest expectations, hoteliers want to stand out by personalizing every aspect of a guest’s stay.  

Integration of AI technology in hotel operations enhances the guest experience as it can predict guest preferences and provide a personalized stay experience such as regulating temperature, controlling lighting closing curtains, etc.

In addition, they can use AI-powered chatbots to provide guests with 24*7 support. Many chatbots come with multi-lingual capabilities assisting guests in their preferred language. Thus, such automation and personalized experiences drive more repeat bookings.

Wrapping up

This blog has given your ideas on how you can increase your hotel bookings. The hotel industry is full of ups and downs, and you can'toperate the same way in every season.

So, the above-mentioned strategies can help you enhance your hotel's reputation, increase your online visibility, and generate more revenue.