Author: Nicolas Audiffren

8 easy steps to boost direct bookings

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Posted on by Nicolas Audiffren
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Augmentez vos réservations directes en 8 étapes faciles

1. Make the reservation process easy

To encourage people who visit your website to book directly through your booking engine, make sure a “Book now” button is easily visible and accessible from all pages of your website. Remember, though, that a booking isn’t guaranteed until the reservation process is complete. According to SalesCycle, 81% of travel reservations are abandoned mid-process. Potential customers often quit because the booking process is confusing, too complicated or too long. To guard against this phenomenon and boost your direct bookings, you must ensure the booking process is fast and easy.

In short, make sure potential clients have the minimum amount of information to provide and the fewest pages to navigate. It’s also a good idea to include clear and visible calls to action that guide the customer through each step of the booking process.

2. Guarantee the best rate

OTAs (online travel agencies) continuously compete with you for bookings. You must convince your potential customers to book their stays directly through your booking engine instead of through an OTA. Why not offer incentives directly to your future customers!? For example, you could offer free Wi-Fi, a room upgrade, free breakfast or even early check-in or late check-out. Note that, for this approach to work, incentives must be highly visible on your booking engine.

3. Offer special packages

Offering exclusive value-added packages on your website could go a long way to convincing potential customers to book directly through your booking engine. Exclusive packages, special promotions and preferential rates are very attractive to website visitors. Such unique features could very well trigger direct bookings.

4. Don’t offer too many options

Too much choice can be stressful and become a hurdle to decision-making. That’s why it’s important to strike the right balance; offer neither too many nor too few options. To leverage direct bookings, keep different room types to a minimum and avoid offering too many packages on your booking engine.

5. Upload relevant images

Photos of your hotel on your website and your booking engine should make a good first impression. These photos offer a unique opportunity to impress potential customers and show them what they can expect from a stay at your establishment. To show your hotel in its best light, make sure the photos convey your establishment’s personality and are relevant, of high quality and taken by a professional photographer.

6. Show some personality

Does your website really communicate the essence of your property? The personality of your property is a unique element that allows you to differentiate yourself from your competitors as it cannot be copied. By showing the personality of your property using words and language that represent it, you connect with your website’s visitors. The authenticity and emotion captured by your potential guests could convince them to book directly from your booking engine.

7. Back up your claims

Don’t expect people who visit your website to believe everything you say. Potential customers are much more likely to believe what your previous customers have to say about your hotel. That’s why it’s essential to include customer opinions on your website. You’ll gain credibility and authenticity and win the trust of your potential customers. By extension, the trust you’ve built will translate to direct bookings through your booking engine.

8. Make the most of remarketing

Remarketing leverages ‘cookies’ technology to target potential customers who have visited your site without booking directly. If a website visitor starts booking a reservation through your booking engine but doesn’t complete it, you may be able to recover their email address and send them special offers to encourage them to follow through on the booking. If you can’t access their email address, you can still target this potential customer through online ad campaigns.

Boosting direct bookings through your booking engine is a challenge you can meet! These eight easy steps will not only help you increase direct bookings, but they will also update your best practices when it comes to online bookings.

10 Digital Marketing Tips to Differentiate Your Hotel

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Posted on by Nicolas Audiffren
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1 – Embrace your specialization

Your hotel should appear in the distribution channels most relevant to your market segment. For example, if you have a boutique hotel, try to get listed on tablethotels.

2 – Make the most of your website

Votre site web doit être constamment mis à jour, accessible à partir de tous les appareils mobiles et refléter les caractéristiques uniques de votre hôtel. Du contenu incluant des photos professionnelles attrayantes pourra considérablement augmenter vos réservations directes.

Your website should be constantly updated, available on all mobile devices, and reflect your hotel’s unique features and characteristics. Content with professional, attention-grabbing photos can significantly increase your direct bookings.

3 – Stand out from the crowd

Be personal and tell a story! Hotels have so many things to tell; even a fifteen-room motel along the highway can have a great story.

4 – Customize the guest experience

Provide additional options for customers making a booking. Create partnerships with local attractions, tours, restaurants, and offer them as add-ons after the customer has booked with you.

5 – Differentiate your booking packages

Innovate with room types as product offers. Use your booking engine to offer promotions and special offers that you do not offer on the OTAs (e.g., a package with a day at a nearby spa or a free meal in your restaurant).

6 – Rewarding loyalty

Reward returning guests that book directly through your website. This can be easily achieved by offering, for example, a 10% discount code for any returning customer, which is still much less than the commission paid to OTAs..

7 – Social media marketing for your hotel

Have a presence on the most popular social platforms. It isn’t just a way to increase your online presence; it is also adds new communication channels. With social media, you have a platform where you can communicate with customers on a more informal level and take advantage of your distinctive traits in order to transmit a friendlier feel to your guests. Social media is a driver of brand awareness, customer relationships and retention.

8 – Targeted market campaigns

In order to provide relevant offers and experiences to your guests, you need to know not only who your target market is, but also what they do and what they want. Helpful resources to find such information include surveys, online reviews, Google Analytics, and Facebook and Twitter insights. As you explore existing data from various sources, you will start to see similarities. Use these similarities to better understand your guests, then give them what they want. Targeted marketing becomes much easier when you have a better understanding of the needs, desires and behaviors of your audience.

9 – Have a digital marketing strategy

Part of knowing your target audience means knowing which tools they use to plan a trip, like search engines, specific websites, social media sites, and reviews. The more your hotel appears in searches and social channels, from the beginning of the customer journey (initial planning) to the end (reviews and post-stay socials), the bigger edge you will have.

10 – Make booking easy

Make booking on your hotel website as simple and efficient as possible. If people can check availability and book a room on any page of the website, regardless of the device they are using and whenever they want, you will be less likely to lose them.

Having a presence on social media platforms is essential if you want to promote your hotel online. By following these tips you’ll be able to differentiate yourself from your competition and attract new potential customers.

8 great reasons to create a customer satisfaction survey

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Posted on by Nicolas Audiffren
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To make sure the service you offer matches your customers’ needs/expectations

Where striving for quality is concerned, the goal is reached when customers are satisfied. Asking them if they are satisfied lets you know whether the service you offer meets their needs and expectations. In a competitive context like that of hospitality, meeting customers’ expectations isn’t optional, it’s essential.

Identify sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction

Satisfaction surveys are mostly used to identify satisfaction and dissatisfaction factors within a continuous improvement approach. Surveys generate information to be used operationally. Using satisfaction surveys gives you a way to satisfy more customers by detecting the reasons for dissatisfaction.

Anticipate expectations and market developments

Knowledge makes it possible to better anticipate what will need to be done. Which is why it’s important not to limit yourself to asking your customers whether they are satisfied (or not) in a survey, but to also encourage them to make suggestions or submit comments (in answer to an open-ended question at the end of the survey, for example).

Follow customer satisfaction over time

A satisfaction survey makes it possible to assess customer satisfaction at a point in time. However, by regularly sending satisfaction surveys, you can take stock of the evolution of your satisfaction indicators. Are your customers more and more satisfied with your products and services? Do they become less satisfied over time? It’s essential to know the answers to these questions at all times.

Stay in touch with your customers

Asking your customers questions to determine whether they are satisfied or not testifies to your receptivity and capacity to listen. By doing so, you are showing your customers that you are interested in them, that their opinion counts and that you care about keeping them satisfied. In addition, maintaining a strong relationship with your guests will help you retain them over the long term

Inspire your team with a new customer-oriented approach

The purpose of the satisfaction survey is also to inspire your team with a new customer-oriented approach. Continuously monitoring your customers’ satisfaction and regularly letting your team know the status of satisfaction indicators gives you a tool to mobilize your teams to respond to issues regarding customer satisfaction. Satisfaction indicators are management tools. Listening to what customers have to say is a philosophy that must be shared by everyone that plays a role in the business. By creating teams that participate to one degree or another in ensuring customer satisfaction, a business gives itself a decision advantage over its competitors.

Optimize decision-making

Satisfaction surveys are helpful tools in the decision-making process. Analyzing the results and determining satisfaction indicators allows management teams and managers to prioritize and rank actions as well as make informed choices.

Increase your sales revenue

The purpose of satisfaction surveys is to contribute to your business and its sales revenue. Knowing your customers’ level of satisfaction means being in a position to continuously improve it. Satisfied customers will stay with you more often, but, more importantly, they won’t hesitate to speak well about your hotel wherever they go. And word of mouth will lead to new visitors. In this way, you’ll generate potential new customers and retain your current ones.