However, the booking abandonment rate in the travel sector alone is 81%. These are passengers who would book a plane ticket but will not pursue payment. Hence, it ends up getting cancelled. 

This same scenario happens on hotel websites. Sure, some factors are out of your control. But, there are things a hotelier can do to help reduce booking abandonment (to an extent, if not completely eliminated).

So, if you have been wondering about how to fix hotel booking abandonment, then this article is for you.I have tried to cover all the aspects and help you deal with issues like losing bookings.

Hotel Booking Abandonment and How it Impacts Revenue

Like booking abandonment in the airline industry, hotel booking abandonment is when guests book a room and do not pursue payment. 

Often, hotels wait 24 – 48 hours for the guests to pay for their booked room. This means that their room will be unavailable to accept new guests during that period. 

If the guests pay, good for them and your business. But what happens if they do not? 

This means you have wasted at least a day keeping that reservation on hold and waiting for the guest to complete the booking. This is a day of lost revenue when you could have given that reservation to someone willing to pay immediately. 

According to data, incomplete bookings account for $1.8 trillion in future revenue. And here are five common reasons people abandon their hotel booking: 

1. Travelers were checking how much a reservation may cost on specific dates
2. Guests were shocked by the additional fees
3. The booking process is long and tedious
4. A technical issue on your hotel website occurred
5. You are not offering their preferred payment method

So can you cope with this? Are there any practical ways? Well, the answer is an absolute YES. And this is exactly what is explained in the next point. 

10 Tips to Reduce Hotel Booking Abandonment on Your Website

As mentioned earlier, hotel booking abandonment can hurt your revenue. Luckily, there are ways to mitigate this.

1. Simplify the booking process

Guests do not like it when it is difficult to book an affordable room during their preferred dates. This includes making your site visitors guess whether a room will be available on the said dates and filling out a lengthy form.

That said, you need to ensure that it will be easy for your guests to look for a room and see whether it will be available on their preferred dates. It can also help if you indicate how many rooms are left.

Another thing you can do is reduce the form length. If anything, minimize your booking process to two pages. The first page can be for indicating their preferred dates, number of guests, and choosing the rooms they want to book. The second page can be where they can fill in their payment details.

This is where a hotel management system like eZee can come in handy. It is a comprehensive management system wherein you can handle reservations online and offline. It also allows you to create hotel packages and manage booking rates with ease. 

Make sure that you test out the online booking experience and that it’s simple, short, and efficient. Online bookings on mobile are also on the rise, so make sure that the booking process on these devices goes without a hitch as well.

2. Improve the website’s UX

Aside from simplifying your booking process, another way to reduce hotel booking abandonment is to improve your hotel website’s UX.

The first thing you might want to improve is your calendar’s usability. As much as possible, fill in the check-in and check-out dates with the current date, plus one. Make sure that the check-out date will change accordingly (plus one) whenever a guest picks a new date.

Say, someone chose to book a room for February 12, 2022. The check-out should automatically change to February 13, 2022. That way, it will be easier for your guests to book their preferred room. It can also help to block out previous dates. This is to prevent input errors and invalid date selection.

Other web UX improvements that you can add are a progress bar at the top of your booking page, detailed room information and photos, accurate and comprehensible room rates.

According to Sytian Productions, a website design Philippines company, “When improving your hotel website’s user experience (UX), the key is to make booking or reservation as intuitive as possible. At the very least, don’t make your booking engine look annoying by overcomplicating the booking flow”.

3. Optimize for a mobile experience

One of the reasons for hotel booking abandonment is a poor mobile experience. What I mean by that is many hotel websites aren’t optimised for mobile devices. And this is where they lose the race. 

It's vital to have a mobile-friendly hotel website. After all, it is a revenue stream that you cannot afford to bypass.

But while mobile now makes up 41% of all traffic to travel sites, they’re only responsible for 18% of bookings. Users might still find bugs and other issues while browsing their phones. As such, they won’t hesitate to look for another hotel that can provide them with a much better guest experience. 

An excellent way to ensure that your site is compatible with any device is by investing in a mobile-friendly site builder. The same thing goes for your online hotel booking system. They should look intuitive and easy to use whether the guest is on a desktop or smartphone. 

For instance, guests should quickly find the different types of rooms available on your hotel website. This includes viewing a photo gallery of each room. Additionally, your "Book This Room" button should stand out and be large enough to tap.

Lastly, you should keep in mind that Google aims to make browsing convenient for smartphone users. Hence, you need to ensure that your hotel website functions properly, whether a guest is booking via desktop or a mobile device.

4. Create special offers for direct bookings

Many sites fail to mention this or actively promote it. But how will your target audience know that you want them to book with you directly if you don’t spell it out? 

That’s why you must come up with a special offer for direct bookings. This doesn’t have to be solely focused on the price. This can include giving complimentary drinks on arrival, providing Wi-Fi in every room, or offering an early check-in.

You can also consider upselling other services like organizing a day tour or airport pick-up and dropoff services.

5. Provide clear pricing

When you publish the pricing of each room, ensure that it is inclusive of taxes and service charges. That way, your guests would know what to expect. 

Seeing how a room costs per night can help them decide whether to book a room in your hotel or not. However, presenting an affordable price only to see it increase once they start booking can give your guest the shock of their lives.

What you can do is indicate whether the pricing is inclusive of tax and service charges. Better yet, publish the total costs of booking a room.

Here’s the thing: Some guests wouldn’t mind paying for a premium experience, as long as they make the most out of it. This could mean booking a hotel room with a private jacuzzi, free Wi-Fi, and complimentary breakfast. 

Hence, it would be better to be upfront with the costs. You can indicate the amount a guest needs to add in case they want to enjoy other services like laundry or full-body massage service.

6. Offer various payment options

According to studies, 10% of customers get lost in the checkout stage. Therefore, the more choices a traveler has in paying for their booking, the happier they’ll go through the booking. 

Now, if they fail to find their preferred payment method, they’ll end up frustrated. Although credit and debit cards are some of the most popular ways of buying something online, it isn’t always the case for everyone. 

These days PayPal and other digital wallets like Amazon Wallet and Apple Pay are some of the most widely accepted payment options.

Word to the wise: The payment infrastructure can make or break a hotel. So, make sure, you have got a supremely seamless payment process. 

You can read this blog to learn more about it in detail. Also, this blog is a gem. 

7. Improve page load time

Similarly, a lot of travel bookings get abandoned because of a slow website loading time.

So, make sure that your hotel website is optimised enough to load quickly. Further, website page load time not only reduces booking abandonment but also helps your website rank higher on google. 

Google shows people sites on search results that take less time to load.

Now, how can you improve your page load time? 

One of the things you can do is reduce the image sizes. Because it impacts the website’s load time significantly. Other than that, also pick the best web hosting services that help improve your site’s page load speed.

A hotel website needs to be created strategically and to help you with that, here’s an amazing blog about it. 

Read: Hotel Website Features Checklist

8. Incorporate live chat

Whenever guests encounter issues while booking on your website, they need someone who can help them resolve them immediately. Hence, it would help if you could incorporate live chat on your hotel site.

Doing so can help your guests book a room successfully. It also prevents you from incurring another abandoned hotel booking.

A live chat feature can also be helpful when guests have some questions before booking a room in your hotel.

Speaking of live chat, a hotel chatbot could also be of great benefit. It can not only resolve queries but can also drive more bookings. 

Here’s a detailed blog to help you understand more about it. 

9. Share unique and authentic local stories

The thing is, there’s very little you can do with someone’s budget. Nonetheless, you can enhance your hotel’s perceived value through good storytelling.

Use your site to show what makes your hotel unique from all your competitors in the area.

It might be having loyal staff who have worked with you for years. Another is a restaurant brand that is associated with your hotel. You can also showcase the special events you host for your guests.

Humans love to hear stories since it’s easier for us to connect and remember these stories. So, don’t be afraid to stand out.

The post 10 Effective Ways to Reduce Online Hotel Booking Abandonment appeared first on eZee Absolute.

With time, booking hotels on smartphones gained momentum. And today, it stands as one of the most preferred ways by travelers to reserve any accommodation facility. 

It’s high time that hotels should shift their focus on how they can utilise this source in the best possible way. So, go, grab a cup of coffee, and read this blog to know more about mobile hotel bookings and tips to increase them.

Why Should Hotels Focus on Mobile Bookings?

Before we look at the tips on increasing mobile bookings, let’s look at some intriguing stats shared by Google about hotels and smartphones. 

• Hotel and flight bookings are among the top 9 searches on mobiles
• Around 79% travelers use their mobile phones for booking travel facilities, as compared to 70% in 2016 (accommodation and transport)
• Travel searches for today and tomorrow on mobile has exponentially increased by 150% in the last 2 years

Even if I leave the facts aside, you cannot deny that booking hotels on mobile is way more convenient than on a laptop or PC:

• Just unlock your phone;
• Search for hotels near me;
• Browse the results;
• Select the property;
• Redirect website or the app’s booking page;
• Fill the details
• Make the payment;
• And receive the confirmation.
  

That was pretty simple, wasn’t it? Maximum 5 mins, that’s all it takes to do so. Therefore, as a hotelier, you should focus on how easily you can get guests to book your property through mobile.

How to Increase Mobile Bookings For Hotels?

As I mentioned the importance of mobile hotel bookings, here are some easy peasy tips you can implement to increase them.

1. Make your website mobile-friendly

Begin with optimising your website for mobiles. If you think that’s unnecessary, think again. 

The reason I’m emphasising on this is because if you do not have a mobile-friendly website it will affect your guest experience. 

In fact, this is what a survey by Google from users across the world revealed:

If there is friction on a hotel’s mobile website while room booking, guests opt for other properties instantly. 

So ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, faster, and easy to navigate. 

2. Invest in your hotel’s app

Many hotels and OTAs these days are building hotel booking apps. If you check on Google Play Store or App-Store, you’ll find a gazillion of them.

Hotel booking apps intrigued hoteliers owing to the fact that they helped them in boosting their sales. Even though the charges for per booking ranged between 5-20%, this was a fair deal. 

Still many hotels think that building an app for their brand is costly, complicated, and futile. But hold on, here’s the truth.

There are many tech organisations that can help you in building your hotel’s mobile-app. Alternatively, you can opt for AI based software using which you can create a mobile hotel booking application in minutes. 

Also, let me tell you that it’s not that expensive. You can opt for a monthly subscription or  work on commission basis. 

3. Create app-only offers

When I joined Go-MMT, many hoteliers asked me specifically to run app-only offers on their property’s listings. The reason was discounts offered during app fest (sometimes even 90%) which increased their bookings exponentially.

It’s one of the sureshot strategies to increase hotel bookings from apps, and there are two ways to approach this step:

1. If you don’t have an application for your property, you can create discounts for your OTA listings. Those when clubbed with payment offers give guests an alluring discount, thereby increasing your property’s mobile bookings. 
2. In case you have your hotel’s application, you can simply use the TAC offered to third parties as direct discount to guests if they book from an android or iOS app.

This strategy can be used to boost your guests’ loyalty. Moreover, you can pitch other guests and encourage them to use the app for future bookings.

4. Speed up the payment process

When it comes to making online payments while booking a hotel, I just keep my fingers crossed. Because I’m always skeptical about the payment going through. 

What if the amount is debited and the booking isn’t successful? How much time would it take for the refund to process? Do I need to chase hoteliers or third parties for the amount?

It’s not only me, but guests across the world face these problems while booking a hotel through mobile. Well, you can address these issues by optimising your property’s payment process.

Partner with the right payment gateway provider to facilitate faster and easier payments. Also, try to keep various payment options for guests like credit cards, debit cards, and UPI. 

In case you have an influx of international travelers, ensure that your hotel’s app or web page has payment options for them as well like PayPal. 

5. Keep reservation form short and simple

No one likes to fill long reservation forms. Even though autofill does this task easily for guests by updating their saved details, some websites and apps ask them to update other points like address, passport details, ID proof, and so on. 

If you have such long forms, guests would skip it and book your property either from an OTA or choose another property which can help in quick reservation. Which means, it’s a direct loss for you.

I’d say keep the form short and simple. Just name, contact number, and email id should do good. The rest of the details can be updated later on when guests arrive at the property. 

Note: Include Optical Character Reader (OCR ) scanner in your app or have one integrated in your PMS. It’ll help in filling the guest details easily.  

6. Embed CTA on each page

While you are optimising your property’s website to increase mobile hotel bookings, ensure that each page has CTA available on it. And especially on the pages that describe details of your property’s room categories and facilities. 

The reason is simple, don’t make your guests scroll just to make a booking. Let’s say if they like a room in your hotel, enabling CTA on that page will help the visitor to directly opt for reserving the same without going back to the main page.

This strategy will also shorten the booking process time to an extent. 

7. Enable push notifications

When you search for flights, you might have come across a pricing alert pop-up. Basically, when you enable it, you get notifications about the rate fluctuations. 

This function can be used for your hotel’s website also. If configured correctly, guests can receive alerts of their upcoming booking, house rules and regulations, or any other update regarding hotel policies.

8. Use social media apps 

Last but not the least, it’s time to use social media platforms to increase mobile hotel bookings. You must have come across a “book now” option on various Instagram and Facebook pages.

Well, that’s the key that could help you in gaining maximum bookings for your property from social media pages. Whenever you are running promotions across these platforms, ensure you have ‘book now’ CTA enabled. 

Butfor this, you need to check if your channel manager 

This is one of the missed out strategies that can help you in increasing your mobile bookings for your hotel, especially from young audiences – Millennials and GenZ. 

The post Why Hoteliers Need To Shift Their Focus On Mobile Hotel Bookings? appeared first on eZee Absolute.

Jacob, however, understood how OTAs worked; and he put that knowledge to use. Within a year, his hotel became one of the top-selling hotels in the Laguna Beach area. 

Often abbreviated as OTA, the online travel aggregators or agents are the catalyst to any hotel’s revenue growth. Based on the bookings we receive from our channel manager, OTAs contribute to around a whopping 25% – 49% of the total hotel bookings globally. Without the help of OTAs, accommodations cannot attain higher occupancy nowadays. 

OTAs help accommodations orbit market segments that they cannot reach on their own. However, new hotels are mushrooming across the town every day. These hotels are also listing themselves on the OTAs, adding to your competition. It is only fair to find means and ways to increase OTA bookings.

In this blog, I have described 13 ways to increase hotel bookings from OTA.

Ways to Increase OTA Bookings

Here are guaranteed steps that will ensure that you get more OTA bookings when applied systematically.

1. Achieve 100% Content Score

This is the first step to increase your OTA bookings. Think of your property’s listing on an OTA as its CV or as a dating profile. It should be impressive enough for the guest to add it to the comparison analysis. 

Make sure you upload the most outstanding feature of your accommodation as the header image. No one wants to look at a hotel that has a WC or a sushi dish as their header image. Upload room images from time to time to let the guests understand what they can expect when they check-in to your property.

Provide information about hotel facilities and amenities which you offer. Further, update the latest hotel policies on the OTAs and take down the non-relevant ones. A guest does not need to know your New Year Gala meals policy if s/he is checking-in in March.

2. Maintain Rate Parity

OTAs put your hotel at a higher position when you maintain rate parity. List all the room types and rate plans across all the OTAs. On top of that, keep a check on all the discounts you offer.

Sometimes, OTAs create discounts undercutting their commission to attract potential bookers. This creates a rate disparity issue. A regular rate disparity results in decreased visibility and hence lower conversion from the OTAs. Avoid it at all costs.

3. Ensure Future Dates Availability

Hoteliers often overlook the online availability of their property for future dates. Sometimes, you get so busy selling that you forget to plan  for future dates. If you cater to international guests, know that people book their international stays well in advance. 

Make sure that your hotel is available for sale on OTAs for at least 365 days from today. Pushing availability and rates is a regular process, not a bi-yearly drill.

4. Create Flexible Cancellation Policies

The OTAs have free cancellation or partial free cancellation as a part of their search funnel. This funnel helps the guests weed out the properties with harsh cancellation policies. 4 out of 5 people select that funnel while searching for a place to stay. 

If you set a non-refundable policy for all the stay dates, your property will disappear from the funnel. Set refundable cancellation policies for the lean season. If you have a large inventory to sell, you may even offer a date change when a customer asks for a cancellation.

This way neither the customer nor the hotel will be at a loss.

The wise said, “Trees that don’t bend with the wind won’t last the storm.”

5. Create Offers and Discounts

The guests and the OTA algorithms love freebies equally. There are various types of discounts that an accommodation provider should float regularly in order to ensure maximum OTA bookings. You can create offers like early-bird discounts for certain future date bookings. Create a last-minute deal to sell whatever inventory is unsold. 

Apart from that, you can create deals for the festive seasons, long weekends, market segments, loyal customer deals, mobile discounts, happy hours, discounts on F&B facilities to get more OTA bookings. 

Discounts and offers don’t have to be in the manner of cash rewards all the time. Instead, you can provide more value for money. When you extend the facilities like free early check-in or free late check-out, people who are travelling by public transport are more likely to book at your property. 

Complimentary transfers, meal upgrades, room upgrades, free usage of your other facilities like a spa will also help you increase the OTA bookings.

6. Incremental Travel Agent Commission for Better Visibility

Every OTA has features available to enhance the visibility and bookings for your property. You offer an extra commission for certain days on every booking or some direct benefits to the guests for booking from a particular OTA.

This feature comes in handy when you have low bookings despite doing everything right. You can also use this feature to get ahead of your competitors and pick up some bookings in advance.

7. Planning the Peak Dates

This is a very crucial exercise. Every hotelier MUST know the high selling dates for his or her hotel. It can be local events, national holidays, festival periods, long weekends, etc. An immensely neglected aspect is the holiday which does not affect your area but affects your clientele.

For example: Winters are regular working days in India but a holiday season in Europe, the US and other colder regions. Travel agents say that Chinese New Year sees around ten million people travelling within the nation to celebrate it. 

Create your rates and offers around these dates well in advance so you can capture maximum business from the OTAs.

8. Technology at Your Rescue

Regardless of your hotel size, it is mandatory to have different software that makes sure ease of operations. This software contributes to getting more OTA bookings directly or indirectly. Here are some must-have software tools for every hotelier.

a. Channel manager

When your property is listed on different OTAs, a channel manager is an important tool to have. It sends real-time inventory and rates to all the OTAs. This prevents underselling, overbooking, and issues like rate disparity.

b. Property Management System

Another important tool that every accommodation provider must implement, is a property management system. Since the hotel deals in many segments like FITS, MICE, Corporates, Offline agents, it is only natural to have a PMS. When the PMS is connected to the channel manager, data redundancy is prevented. You save time as the PMS updates room status on the channel manager, which then pushes the rates and inventory further to OTAs.

c. Revenue Management System

Knowing you sold many rooms in the night makes you happy. But when you realize that you could have charged more for the same bookings, it kind of becomes a joy killer. 

A revenue management system comes in handy during such occasions. It detects the increase in bookings and starts increasing the price accordingly. This way you don’t lose the additional revenue from the OTAs.

d. Rate Shopper

One more tool that every accommodation provider should invest in is a rate shopping tool. The rate shopper scraps your property’s and your competitors’ prices from different OTAs for a given time frame. Now, if you are wondering what good it does to you; let me tell you what all insights you can get from it.

• Parity Check

Rate shopper tool checks your hotel’s sale price on different OTAs for a particular date or date range. If an OTA is creating any price disparity, you can immediately come to know and act upon it so you do not lose visibility on other online portals.

• Competitor Check

Keep your friends close and your competitors closer. The guests always compare hotels with similar prices, amenities in a location while they make a booking. If your prices are competitive, there are high chances that a customer will book your hotel.

Apart from that, you can get a general market trend and decide on the pricing strategy accordingly.

9. Managing the Reviews

Getting bookings is just not enough. You must also ensure that your guests enjoy the stay at your hotel. Make sure that you collect the feedback from the guest via the OTA they booked your stay with.

Your work is not over just by getting the reviews; you must reply to them timely. If a guest has left a positive review, thank the guest for it. If there is negative feedback, thank the guest for drawing your attention to it, take corrective action and respond to the review.

At times, the guest leaves negative feedback or a fake review to sabotage your reputation. Get in touch with the OTA and get these reviews taken down or reply to them appropriately.

There are review management tools available at your disposal where you can check your reviews, know the ratings and respond to the reviews as well. My personal favourite is Critique. You must check it out.

10. Know Your Compset

In an ideal situation, every customer wants to stay at your hotel only. But in the real world, there are new hotels coming in daily and there are old hotels with a great reputation. Identify them, perform a compset analysis regularly and adjust your pricing accordingly. You can read about compset analysis here.

11. Creating Pricing Strategy

The current time requires that we make a pricing strategy, revenue goals, the competitors’ pricing and our occupancy as per the demand to get more bookings. The pricing strategy helps you to sell at attractive prices, even during peak dates.

12. Listing on different OTAs

Follow Buffett’s mantra; do not put all your eggs in one basket.

If your property is listed on limited OTAs, you are missing out on other markets. While some OTAs cater to domestic guests, others have a presence in the international market directly or with the help of affiliates. Identify them and list your property on those OTAs as well, apart from your regular ones. Ensure the OTA is compatible with your channel manager to assure a correct flow of the rates and inventory.

13. Get Tips from OTA managers

OTA account managers are your best friends. Reach out to them time-to-time to get an idea about the current booking trends, new campaigns you can participate in to increase OTA bookings. They can even help you to get a slot in booster campaigns like the deal of the day which highlights your hotel on the top.

Prevent overselling by OTAs

Nothing is good in excess. It can lead to catastrophic results. Just like you should not depend on only a selected OTAs for bookings, you should not also depend only on OTAs to get your bookings. Try to build other channels like GDS, offline agents, consolidators, etc. The best would be to get loyal customers of your own.

This helps you stay relevant if an OTA decides to shut down or if an OTA manager does not favour your hotel over the others.

The post 13 Insanely Useful Ways to Improve Your Hotel’s OTA Bookings appeared first on eZee Absolute.

If you’re managing a hotel, as an owner or working as a revenue manager, then you certainly know that seasonality is a major factor in your business.

Without a doubt, the peak season is the best for hoteliers as they enjoy high demand and an influx of guests. Also, it is not even difficult to achieve full hotel occupancy during such times. However, they also know that this is soon going to change as it does every year. Just after the peak or high season will come the mid or shoulder season, and eventually the low or off-season.

Struggling with attracting guests and reaching maximum hotel occupancy is the harsh reality and the most distinctive feature of the global hospitality industry. 

So, hoteliers like you need to have a good understanding of seasonality to increase low season hotel occupancy. As a result, you can avoid irregular cash flow, low returns on capital investment, and underutilization of staff and facilities.

Let’s move ahead and find the best ways to increase the hotel occupancy rate during the off-season.

How to determine the off-season?

The first step any hotelier should take in preventing a slow season is to gauge exactly when the downturn starts each year.

Is it tied to the weather, holidays or other events?
OR
Is there a corresponding slowdown in the social calendar of your locale?

Sketching out the boundaries of your off months will help you determine; what factors are causing it and come up with a plan to fight for it. 

However, seasonality is the major factor of tourist inflows during specific periods of the year. It includes natural reasons, like temperature and climate as well as institutional reasons, like holidays, events, socioeconomic status, and travel habits. 

Whatever the reason be, the fact remains that seasonality creates demand fluctuations that affect all finance and labor operations of a hotel.

How to beat the off-season and increase hotel occupancy?

Low seasons can make or break a property, particularly if budgets are already tight. Also, if your hotel is already operating on threadbare profit margins, any significant dip in bookings and revenue can spell disaster. 

Likewise, every hotelier, regardless of the size of the hotel, has faced challenges during the off-season. If you’ve been in the hotel business long enough, you should be aware of your low and peak seasons to prepare and plan for them well in advance.

During such times, all you need to do is, BOOST YOUR MARKETING PLANS. Make sure you do this with some creativity to increase your hotels’ sales during the low season. Also, clever tricks, careful planning, and a bit of pop psychology can bring more guests into your hotel even during the low season. 

In addition, a property manager who has plans to maintain its occupancy during low season, can gain profits and stand ahead of its competitors.

Also, many holidayers prefer and actively search for bookings around these times to avoid crowds and high prices. This acts as an advantage for you, to make your hotel as attractive as possible and increase your direct bookings.

Below I‘ve shared some ideas to improve your hotel occupancy during low season:

1. Increase repeat guests

Your guests (new or repeat) are one of your best marketing assets. They can make your hotel sink or swim in the market, depending on the guest experience you provide. Repeat guests are like an investment for hotels that give you a good return. The more the investment (your loyal guests), the more will be the return (business ROI). 

Be it a hotel, B&B, restaurant or any hospitality business, they always focus on keeping existing guests the same as gaining new ones. They have a habit to recognize hotel staff who dedicatedly do their job and serve them in the best way possible. 

A professional hotel ensures that guests get the best experience, before, during and post their stay. Hence, there’s nothing better than the loyal guests that can promote and provide you with more new bookings. 

The best time to apply this strategy is, during the peak season as you get maximum guests at your hotel to attract them for their next stay. Which in turn, would be a profitable business for you during the off-season.

Check out some best methods to increase repeat guests at your hotel!

2. Run loyalty programs

Running loyalty programs are considered to be one of the finest approaches to increase repeat guests at your hotel. Such loyalty programs will help you to increase your hotel’s occupancy, by creating an even stronger relationship with your guests. For example, send personal emails by offering them special discounts, offers, reward points and much more to attract them.

So, MAKE SURE you never forget to note the mail address of your guests when they are checking in.

For this, all you need is an accurate guest’s database, transaction history, reports of your guest, and an apt loyalty management software for your hotel. Such a loyalty program software will help you build, run and maintain all the operations of your hotel loyalty programs. 

3. Use unutilized spaces for different purposes

Look into every nook and corner of your hotel to find spaces that are not utilized or not used often. Using underutilized spaces to enhance your hotel revenue during the off-season is a good way to earn a side income. 

Such spaces might not necessarily be a permanent set up at your hotel, but work as a promotion strategy during the low season. For example; 

1. You could use your garden for weddings, parties or events. Deliver a great experience to the guests who attend these events and they could turn into your future guests too. 
2. If you have a hall; use it for yoga or a dance class, family gathering or business meetings, etc. This way, the guests will also spend a little extra money in your hotel then you expected; thus increasing your revenue.
3. An upcoming trend is to use your hotel lobby as a workspace, a social hotspot, a coffee shop, a small library or any flexible space that can be used for almost everything.

Setting up such spaces at your hotel will add a lot of value to your property; along with the side income that you will earn. 

These are just a few ones mentioned, however, there can be many other ways to make use of spaces and promote your hotel during the off-season. 

4. Organize events

Events will always be a good driver of revenue for hotels during the low season. Additionally, each event has a chance to upsell extra services of your hotel, like rooms, restaurant services, entertainment or relaxation options.

Scope out the area for local events and activities like music gigs, concerts, festivals, parties, fairs, comedy events, marathons and more happening in the area. This will invariably attract guests from all over. 

You could also create a partnership with the event sponsors and set special promotions implying a discount for anyone who will be present or takes part in the event. This will help you in gaining great marketing opportunities to attract more guests.

5. Tie up with local businesses

Speaking of partnerships, get in contact with local businesses to promote your hotel as well as their business. This savvy two-way partnership reaps benefits when it comes to the off-season.  

So, increase the flow of your hotel guests by promoting it to a local company for their events, such as business seminars, meetings, etc. Such events are conducted with many guests and consequently, they are very profitable as they would book multiple rooms at a time. 

Also, KEEP IN MIND that some business events are repeated every year, so it can become a source of a safer income!

Additionally, you could offer up some of your hotel’s services to locals in the area without the need for booking a room. Such as allowing guests a 24-hour pass to your gym, pool or games room, or invite them to enjoy the bar and restaurant at low prices. Make locals feel particularly welcome and special for a relationship that will last further in the future.

6. Run discount offers and promotions

Off-seasons are what discounts are made for. People love discounts and the perception of a “good deal” will definitely help your hotel to increase bookings. Budget and last-minute travellers will be scouting for good deals during less popular months, so make your discounts effective and clear. 

Encourage guests to stay longer as they add in their dates, with a reminder of the discount that you offer. Also, attract families, business groups, or other travellers with discounts offered on group bookings.

Or you can also offer discount promotions like: 

Book for 2 nights and get 1 night free!
OR
5%-10% discount for those who share a promotional post on Facebook
OR
Tag the property name in a photo on Instagram.

Offering such discounts is probably one of the best ways to lure your guests during shoulder and low seasons. 

Few booking engines allow you to create such promotions in the software itself. See, how you can do it in our booking engine eZee Reservation.

Further, ALWAYS be active on social media platforms and increase your bookings from there as well! Engage more followers on these platforms with our social media posts templates.

7. Meet the seasonal requirements

Find out what makes your hotel tick during the high season and use it to your advantage. For example, if your hotel enjoys a high season every year because of the monsoon, why not recreate the monsoon feel during the off-season? Offer rain dance in your package and create a monsoon theme to make it appealing. 

Or, if yours is a beach property that does not attract crowds during monsoon, then offer happy hours and pool parties during that season. 

Or, if you consider summer as your low season, then organize activities of a rain dance to beat summer blues at your property.

Market these packages in an exclusive manner which will make travelers feel privileged to be a part of it. DO represent your hotel in such a way showing that it is off-season friendly. This can be showcased by reasons like climate, season, festival, etc. via social posts or ads and suchlike.

Also, tempt them by talking about the various other opportunities they would get like low airfares, special discounts, other offers running in the city, etc. during the off-season months.

8. Run remarketing ads in the off-season

If you have some budget, then running effective REMARKETING ADS is one of the most beneficial techniques to promote your hotel. Your website can be the base of these ads as you’d want searchers to land on your website after clicking on the ads. 

With remarketing, you can lower your abandonment rate and close more bookings. Show attractive display ads to people who recently visited your site. These ads follow your website visitors after they leave your website without performing any action.

This reminds them that you’re there to lead them through the process. Try showing them a better deal with you instead of your competitors, and make the booking process as easy as possible.

This way, you can increase your bookings by displaying attractive discounts or deals you offer in the ads during such low-season.

Here are some effective FREE ad templates to help you guide better in running these ads!

9. Use email marketing

Hotel email marketing is an effective tool to attract more guests to your hotel during the off-season. When the low season is on the horizon, send out emails to your past guests. Let them know about your special offers and remind them of their loyalty discount. 

You can also add an incentive by offering an extra discount for the first 5 guests who book, telling them that this offer is exclusive to them as a valued past guest. Make sure you hint the incentive/discount part in the subject with a snappy, attention-grabbing title.

Also, offer your guests some attractive amenities at your property for free with a night stay at your hotel. DO HIGHLIGHT facilities like spa, yoga, gym, etc as well as focus on the various local events taking place to make them book your hotel fast. 

This attracts new guests and retains existing ones; thus earning great ROI for your business.  

10. Implement an off-season pricing strategy

During the off-season, you’d focus on filling your rooms; so charge less to encourage bookers to book at your hotel.

The first step in implementing off-season pricing is to segment your market into known groupings by location, demographics, climate and so forth. The core room price is just one aspect of the pricing strategy. So, consider combining it with other factors like guest’s stay preferences, no.of guests, and past booking prices, etc to create an effective pricing strategy. 

Make sure your low-season prices are attractive and affordable. Low enough to appeal at lean times of the year but high enough to cover your costs and make a profit. 

You can also invite your past guests to spend a second stay at your hotel at a much lower price offered exclusively to them.

Also, with a rate shopper tool, take a look at your direct competitors (including hotels) and see how they are setting their low-season prices. Avoid under-pricing dates that are in high demand e.g. Christmas, New Year, Holi, etc.

11. Overall, start preparing for this before-hand and be consistent

Prepare for off-season during the peak season time itself so that hoteliers like you can have a bumper season during those low season months. Remember, little things can make a huge difference and can hugely increase your hotels’ revenue.

Prepare a checklist of how and what features you can promote for your hotel during the off-season to enhance bookings. 

PLAN an effective strategy and be consistent in it. TAKE and IMPLEMENT the various tips mentioned in this blog.

ANALYZE the data of your latest low season guests and see who truly booked a room at your hotel. TRY out some new marketing and advertising strategies to discover how you can attract a different audience for your upcoming year.

NOTE: Don’t obsess in acquiring more bookings during the low season if it doesn’t make sense financially or if there simply isn’t enough demand. Use this time efficiently to undertake essential maintenance, create next year’s marketing strategy or simply enjoy the time off.

GET STARTED TO EXPERIENCE FULL OCCUPANCY DURING OFF-SEASON!!

The post 11 Proven Ways to Increase Low Season Hotel Occupancy appeared first on eZee Absolute.