Are you worried about profitability of your sales mix? In the race to reduce intermediation and improve direct sales in hotels, chains have made efforts in recent years to offer more aggressive offers or access to exclusive services during stays.
In order to improve the profit margins of these strategies, it is essential to obtain more information about guests, in order to improve your loyalty programs and your future recruitment and marketing actions.
Furthermore, the personalization of the guest experience o the improvement and optimization of the reservation platforms o ecommerce, are other workhorses in the quest to increase the revenue per guest or the conversion ratios of reservations on our website. In this article we tell you what the main actions are to improve direct sales and how technology can be your best ally. Take note!
What are the advantages of improving direct sales in hotels?
Hotel chains dedicate great efforts within their business plans to seek technologies or strategies that help them reduce their dependence on OTAs and tour operators, in terms of generating reservations. On the other hand, more and more chains reinforce the figure of the Revenue manager, with the professional profile dedicated to obtaining more from each guest, and it is much more profitable to focus on making a guest fall in love and bring him back, than to focus efforts on attracting new ones through direct channels.
What advantages can we obtain by focusing on improve direct sales in our hotel?
- Greater profitability
- Lower acquisition costs
- In general, lower cancellation rates compared to OTAs.
- Greater ease for guest loyalty, since we have all the data of our visitors.
According to a study by the Hospitality Net portal, the direct channel has proven to be the most resilient in 2020, generating up to 58,6% of the reservations made during 2019, surpassing Booking (41,5%) and Expedia (22,8%). The reduction of the investment in publicity of the other companies can respond in part to this greater resistance.
¿What strategies to follow to improve direct sales in my hotel?
1. Focus on creating the best guest experience
It's a long-distance race, but it can pay off big year after year. To focus on study and optimize Guest Journey will help you create a better experience at the different points of contact with your hotel guest (from pre-booking to stay and post-stay). At this point, we are talking about offering a more personalized communication and even being able to anticipate the needs of our guests, to offer you the services that may interest you the most.
Some key actions here:
In pre-booking
Optimize our online sales channel it's key. In most cases, it will be the customer's first point of contact with our hotel, and if we can't capture it, they will leave the process without converting. Improve the user experience on the web and add functionalities that allow you communicate with the client in a personalized way, It will create a good experience during the booking process, which will drive direct sales.
During the stay
Main aspects to take into account:
- Check-in
The first point of physical contact with the guest and a great opportunity to start earning their trust. Streamlining this process and offering a warm and personalized welcome are one of the areas for improvement here. In fact, this process is being streamlined thanks to the emergence of online check-in through apps.
On the other hand, once your guests check in, the ability to answer a large number of questions that your clients may have about their stay. Email or messaging for guests located on the television or on the hotel's screens provide a quick response to these needs. The level of personalization of these communications will depend on the ability to collect customer information during the pre-booking phase.
- The quality and security of the WiFi network
This is a basic requirement and, if problematic, it can increase the volume of negative reviews and comments on social networks or booking platforms. Until recently, Wi-Fi networks were a service more to offer the guest, but in these moments not only has to be present, it has to be efficient, safe, correctly sized and offer the largest possible area of coverage inside the facilities.
Nowadays, it is no longer possible to fail at this point, since this will cause the visitor not to consider returning to our hotel or to refer to us in a negative way.
- personalized communication
Some points to keep in mind would be:
a) Have a WiFi hotspot where, in addition to offering a more secure web connection to the guest, we can communicate offers and services or invite them to share their experience on networks, reinforcing our notoriety.
It may interest you: Cerium presents its technological innovations for the hotel of the future at Fitur
b) Develop a communication and messaging strategy during your stay is something to keep in mind in search of excellence in service. We may ask for your opinion about your experience up to that point or inquire about possible needs or services that may be of interest to you. Making the client feel unique and special at all times is a great added value for your hotel.
c) Have an IPTV system. At this point we are talking about offering the best television consumption experience, so that the guest feels at home. Online games, personalized channels, casting service to enjoy platforms such as Netflix or HBO, and personalized communication of products and services of interest, which help improve the revenue of that client during his visit.
Post-stay
The ability of our hotel to collect more and better data from the visitor will depend on the possibility of personalizing our communications with them afterwards: thank you emails, satisfaction surveys, sending special promotions for future reservations, etc.
How to measure the satisfaction of our customers?
- Something obvious, checking the recurrence volume of our guests but, in addition, monitoring the increase in median revenue volume for each client.
- Furthermore, monitoring the volume and quality of reviews obtained on the Internet. Positive reviews are the best word of mouth for attract more direct sales in your hotel.
2. Improve data collection for your sales and loyalty campaigns
The gradual digitization of hotels is allowing improvement in one of the major objectives of the sector: get the best information from each guest. What is the best tool or resource here? Have a hotspot captive portal for Internet access.
In addition to what was mentioned in the previous point, the captive portals they give access to the Internet through a login, which in turn can be executed by connecting a social network or by entering an email and other personal data (depending on the needs of each hotel). all this valuable information is already stored in the hotel database, improving volume and, above all, segmentation.
It may interest you: What is a captive portal hotspot and why do I need one at my hotel?
The improvement of data collection is the basis on which to strengthen loyalty programs, personalizing marketing actions aimed at bringing our guests back. Some examples here would be:
- birthday greeting emails
- Visit Thank You Emails
- Punctual and segmented shipments of promotions or events.
In addition, you will be able to automate satisfaction surveys in order to obtain more reviews from portals such as TripAdvisor or use the generated databases to carry out campaigns on social networks aimed at impacting and attract new bookings between users similar to yours.
3. Optimize your ecommerce infrastructure
Price is still one of the variables that most affects the conversion of your direct channel. Your customers should always be able to book on the best rate and offer available to them. Some interesting ideas for improvement here include:
- Use applications that help users to see the prices of the main channels within the hotel's own booking engine and that, thanks to price control widgets, allow the best conditions to be offered to the direct sales portal.
- Customize through online sales platforms the offers we make to users during their purchase process, generating a good shopping experience and a satisfactory payment process.
- Find the best shopping experience mobile devices and, here are proliferating the Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). These are multiplatform web applications that aim to bring the experience of a native application closer to the web, even replacing native mobile applications.
Users are increasingly reluctant to download applications, but visit hotel reservation websites and platforms from mobile phones, demanding a fast, attractive and intuitive booking process. Despite the fact that users access more with their mobile phones, they are still reluctant to make reservations on hotel websites from this device, largely due to loading times or the complexity of the process. PWAs are the answer to that GAP.
Among the advantages of PWAs are:
- Instant loading speed (less than a second).
- They work in offline mode
- They are secure platforms, always on SSL certificate.
- They offer smooth animations and respond very quickly to user interaction
- Very simple development and easy integration with the hotel website.
- Smooth browsing, even with 3G
- Incorporate push notifications
- Installable via banners, no app stores
- Unlike native applications, they are indexed in search engines, which amplifies their visibility.
- The agility that they give to the purchase process reduces the bounce and fall of users during the reservation process.
In short, we are talking about a tool that is increasingly in demand in the sector and very beneficial for improve direct sales of our hotel ecommerce.
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Cerium, your ally to sell more in your hotel
En Cerium, as a technological integrator for hotels, we have multiple services focused on improving direct sales in hotels. Our DIGITAL division works to offer our clients the best ecommerce solutions to increase their reservations, such as Progressive Web Apps; while our Data and Net division has all kinds of solutions to improve data collection from your guests and communication with them.
Contact us and we will offer you the best services to improve your profitability:
