The benefits of having your own booking engine
Portugal is undergoing a tourism boom and competition between hotels of all sizes has never been so fierce. With the help of online travel agencies (OTAs) tourists can find the most affordable accommodations through one site or app.
Everybody is a winner, right? Sort of. The hotel industry benefits from the OTAs action, but it comes with a price, due to high fees OTAs charge for bookings through their platforms.
The best way to avoid those fees and get a better financial return is to allow potential guests to book their reservation directly with the hotel through an integrated booking engine.
What’s a booking engine?
A booking engine is a mechanism that allows users to search room availability in that hotel for a specific time frame and make the reservation themselves. It presents all the amenities and services they can include in their package, and book them immediately.
Benefits
A booking engine provides autonomy, which is welcomed by digital denizens who have a more proactive attitude towards their online shopping. Digital consumers like to search and acquire products and services on their own, especially if they can access better terms and prices.
Besides simplifying the acquisition process by cutting out middlemen, a booking engine eliminates the risks of overbooking, enhancing accommodation management.
Hotels can bypass OTAs fees while at the same time engage more directly with their customers, getting to know about their preferences and gathering data that can be useful to detect behavioural patterns, client types and market niches.
How to make the best of it
Booking engines are, besides an eCommerce mechanism, an excellent marketing tool. By using the information gathered in the conversion processes – finished or not – hotels can develop new marketing strategies.
By putting booking engines in tandem with digital marketing campaigns, users can access promotional codes for special offers. An Ad campaign programmed to show in wedding related searches can offer a honeymoon package to the newlywed niche.
The booking engine is the ultimate Call To Action, because it promotes conversion throughout the shopping process, being the result a real life experience. Its integration in marketing campaigns is capital to convert visitors into guests.
Solplay is a Zyrgon client that use a booking engine we developed that integrates Omnibees, one of the largest accommodation distribution platforms, in which clients have access to the availability and typology of the accommodations, as well as an offer of complimentary packages and extra perks and services.
With a straightforward selection process, users have access to exclusive offers through the booking engine, promoting the customization of the guests’ stay.
And the business of any hotel is to promote the best experience for their guests, making it feel better than home.
Zyrgon has been developing dedicated booking engines for hotels and in hosting websites, with awesome reviews from our patrons.
Get comfortable. Make your booking with us.