And there’s no hiding that Online Travel Agents (OTAs) are a major source for optimizing their online booking flow.

It is observed that OTAs control approximately 2/3rd of all online bookings.

Then it must be the best friend of hoteliers, right? Indeed! 

But with so many OTAs available, how do you know where to list your hotel? Which OTAs are the best? 

Well, every OTA is best in its own way; however, there are a few that might do a better job and deliver better results. 

So for all the hoteliers reading this blog, here I am sharing some of the best OTA platforms to increase your hotel bookings by manifolds.

Top 9 OTAs to Drive Maximum Bookings

I am listing below the prime OTAs in the hotel industry that can promote your hotel on a larger scale to drive maximum bookings.

Here goes the list:

1. Booking.com

Booking.com is recognized as the global leading OTA platform where more than 1.5 million rooms are booked on a daily basis.

It connects a wide spectrum of accommodations; from apartments, vacation homes, and family-run B&Bs to 5-star luxury resorts, tree houses, and even igloos.

Its website and mobile apps are available in 43 languages which helps accommodation providers to generate a worldwide network and enhance exposure.

But the real treat for hoteliers is that the listing process doesn’t charge you anything. You only get charged if a booking is successfully completed.

In addition, this platform showcases the booking info in a very clear way so that the users get transparency on every detail and policy. This helps establish a strong sense of trust among its users.

2. Agoda

With a strong emphasis on providing customers with cheap or discounted accommodation, Agoda is getting popular among travellers.

It can help your property business to stand out whether it is a hotel, hostel, or any resort. It is preferred for group bookings and packages because it offers flight + hotel bookings at low costs. Therefore, it is an ideal platform to attract international travellers.

Agoda is owned by Booking Holdings (which also owns Booking.com) and it charges between 15 to 20% on successful bookings.

3. Airbnb

Airbnb is a classic choice for small and local properties to boost their booking flow.

And if you look precisely at the contemporary picture, you will see that this platform is gaining popularity among big hotels too.

The reason that guests get attracted to the properties listed on it is – they are personalized, homely, and have a local connection. So if you have a well-furnished property, then Airbnb is the ideal place to land.

Airbnb might drive a few bookings compared to other mainstream OTAs but it ensures longer stays.

Also, it does not charge you money directly—it takes a cut out of every booking which is the lowest among other OTAs, typically 3% of the booking amount.

4. Hotelbeds

With more than 71,000 tour operators, travel agents, and airlines, and 50 million room nights sold annually, hotelbeds is one of the renowned names in the accommodation distribution space.

By listing your hotel on hotelbeds you get all the solutions and tools you need to maximize your room occupancy rates. Additionally, it also offers a wide range of marketing solutions and products that gets your property much-needed attention. Meaning, your hotel gets seen in the right place at the right time.

Over the years, hotelbeds has worked dedicatedly to build strong relationships at both ends of the travel chain to offer products, services, and solutions that help all its client and partners grow.

It can rightly be said that it is one of those platforms that can contribute significantly to maximizing your hotel occupancy and revenue. 

5. Cleartrip

Founded in 2006 as a hotel and air aggregator, Cleartrip is another popular OTA that accommodation providers shouldn’t overlook.

Being one of India’s fastest-growing online travel portals and with hundreds of partners from the travel and hospitality industry, the OTA provides access to a bouquet of offerings and enables people to take that much-needed vacation at attractive prices.

Upon its acquisition by Flipkart, the platform even participated in the Flipkart Big Billion Day event, which was like a travel shopping spree on the Cleartrip website and app as well.

If your hotel is in India and looking for a bundle of services to just boost occupancy but also increase revenue, then Cleartrip should be one of your go-to OTA.  

6. MakeMyTrip (GoMMT)

Established in 2000, MakeMyTrip is a household name in the Indian OTA space and over the years the company has strengthened its offerings extensively. 

It has more than 2.5 million daily users searching for hotels and homestays, making it the preferred OTA for accommodation providers. 

One of the events that made MMT one of the most preferred partners was its merger with Ibibo Group in 2017, making it GoMMT.

Today, GoMMT is a leading travel group in the country, providing a one-stop shop for all accommodation providers.

Whether you own a hotel, villa, resort, lodge, guest house, serviced apartments, hostel, homestay, cottage, or a BnB, you can list your property for free with MakeMyTrip & Goibibo and leverage its best-in-class offerings to maximize online bookings and bottom line.

If your property isn’t listed on GoMMT, there’s no doubt that you’re lagging. So, without further ado, get your accommodation listed on this sought-after platform. 

7. Expedia 

Expedia lures maximum travellers to its platform through the “Best Price Guarantee”!

Yes, it pulls out the cheapest deals for the consumers and hence they love it. And this is why the booking traffic is always massive on Expedia.

Adding to this, it provides everything in one place. Travellers can book their flights, hotels, or packages for their entire trip in one go at an affordable price.

With commission fees between 20% and 25% on bookings, it gives great exposure to increase your hotel presence.

Furthermore, as a fun fact, Expedia is one such entity that owns more than 200 travel booking sites, and over 150 mobile apps and websites worldwide. So, you must understand how this company is still a reigning leader. 

While it’s not practical to list all of them, here are some of the popular ones:

• Hotels.com
• Travelocity
• Orbitz

8. Trip.com

With Trip.com rewards (coupon codes and discounts), travellers get a chance to save on their bookings. This is why it has 400 million users worldwide. 

If an OTA has such a massive following then isn’t it the best match for your hotel? It is!

This OTA lets the customers buy their whole trip at one stop. Whether it is booking a hotel, flight tickets, car rentals, or holiday deals.

The commission rates are also flexible depending on various factors like your property size, location, duration of stay, and so on.

9. eDreams

In quarter one of the fiscal year 2023, e-Dreams reported 4.4 million bookings, which is the highest ever in a quarter and 50% up on bookings compared to pre-pandemic.

This rapid increase in bookings has a hidden fact that it offers up to 40% discount on its vacation packages (flight + hotel).

Here is a little more: If you list your property on E-dreams ODIGEO you can leverage the opportunity of getting exposure through 3 more international brands along with eDreams - Opodo, GoVoyages, and Travellink.

This can help you reach 18.5 million travellers in 46 countries. So think it over!

OTA Listing and Your Channel Manager Go Hand in Hand

Firstly, listing your hotel on OTA platforms can work only if you have a suitable channel manager at your property because that is the source to connect your hotel with any OTA.

With a channel manager, you update your inventory and rates on various channels or OTAs you are listed on. It automates the process of adjusting rates and room availability.

Now, to connect with any OTA platforms including the top ones mentioned above, you need to make sure that your channel manager offers the required integration to do so.

You can check out eZee Centrix, our channel manager, which offers integration with 130+ OTAs, GDS, and vacation portals. 

In addition to this, if you prefer any local OTA platform whose integration isn’t available then you can contact us and get it integrated with our channel manager depending on its feasibility.

The post Top 9 OTAs for Hotels to Boost 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.

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