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5 tips to optimize your hotel’s profile on Booking.com – Part 4

In this series, we are focusing on easy recommendations that you can leverage for driving more demand to your property through Booking.com.

In the fourth part of this series, we will discuss Non-refundable Rates and how you can benefit from it.

Non-refundable Rate

According to a recent survey done by Booking.com, the two most important considerations for making new bookings are flexible cancellation policies and competitive pricing offers. In the third part of the series, we discussed the benefits of Flexible Rate Plans. However, for 40% of travelers, pricing is a major factor, and this is where non-refundable rate comes into play.

Benefits of Non-refundable Rate

Non-refundable rate typically offers lower rates than fully flexible rates and are quite popular with travelers with fixed plans. Hotels often offer non-refundable rates to secure guaranteed bookings and revenue.

According to Booking.com data, hotels who offer this Rate Plan reduce cancellations by an average of at least 9% and have experienced overall booking boost by up to 5%.

Booking.com recommends participating hotels to combine at least two of three rate plans: Free Cancellation, Non-Refundable and Early Booker. Data shows that hotels who have efficiently used all three have seen a 5% increase in bookings, an 11% increase in visibility and a 9% reduction in cancellations.

Hotels can activate the Non-refundable rate plan from their RateTiger dashboard, by simply selecting the option from the promotion tab. They can also monitor and modify all existing campaigns on Booking.com from the View and Apply Promotion Module on RateTiger.

To know more about it, contact us on marketing@erevmax.com

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5 tips to optimize your hotel’s profile on Booking.com – Part 3

Through this series, we are highlighting some of the deals and promotions that you can leverage to attract more business to your property through Booking.com.

In the third part of this series, let’s look at Flexi Rate and how and when to activate it.

Be more flexible with your rate policy

Thanks to the uncertain times we are living in, traveler behaviour has gone for a radical shift in the past one year. With flights being rebooked and travel plans being bumped, many guests are now wary of sudden change in plans.

According to a survey done in April 2020 by Booking.com, 73% of customers cited free cancellation as their main reason for booking a property. A fully flexible rate plan allows hotels to offer potential bookers more freedom in case their travel plans or general circumstances change.

However, because of its flexible nature, this rate plan is also the most expensive one making it the most profitable for hotels.

Flexible – 1 day policy

Due to the ongoing pandemic, most hotels across the world have taken a flexible approach to their pricing policy. Booking.com has recently created the Flexible – 1 day policy which allows hotels to quickly extend all your free cancellation periods to one day before check-in. This basically means a guest can cancel for free until 24 hours before the check-in. After that point, they will be charged the cost of the first night if they decide to cancel.

Benefits of the Flexible – 1 day policy

  • Drive more bookings by potential guests looking for flexibility.
  • Improve visibility in search ranking.
  • Decide which rates you want to convert to ‘Flexible – 1 Day’ policy and have full control on all rates.

Adding Flexible Rate Plans

Hotels can create and manage the Flexible Rate Plan either from their RateTiger Channel Manager platform or from the Booking.com extranet. For any queries or to see how to set up this Rate, contact us today –marketing@erevmax.com

 

 

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5 tips to optimize your hotel’s profile on Booking.com – Part 2

In this series, we are focusing on easy and highly actionable tips on the best ways to optimize Booking.com channel to get more reservations for your property.

In the second part of this series, we are happy to highlight the Early Booker Rate on Booking.com.

Create special promotion for Early Bookers

Done correctly, promotion can be a great tool to grab attention of the bookers searching for a property.  Hotels can create targeted campaigns through their offers. Booking.com allows Early Booker Rate for hotels to target potential guests who prefer booking far in advance. This way, hotels can secure bookings well before a busier season giving it a chance to start from an advantageous position.

The Early Booker deals are flexible options where hotels can fix their own discounts, duration, time and booking window based on their requirements. They can set them up and run the promotion for multiple days or months when this promotion will be visible to guests.

Want to know where to start?

Booking.com recommends setting the Early Booker Deal promotion up for a minimum of 30 days in advance from check-in. Many hotels create special rates for lead time of 90 days and 180 days in advance as well.

In recent months, Booking.com made significant updates on this promotion. The Early Booker Rate is designed based on the COVID-19 recovery patterns identified in guest demand and can easily be adapted to any hotel’s particular situation and needs.

A point to remember

Hotels can leverage Early Booker Rate to improve occupancy for future dates. However, the hotel revenue management team needs to be extra careful to control this promotion and ensure only eligible guests receive this special rate.

You can now create and manage an Early Booker Rate directly from the Promotions section on your RateTiger dashboard. For any queries or to see how to set up this Rate, contact us today –marketing@erevmax.com

 

 

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Capture the fastest-growing segment of bookers with Booking.com’s Mobile Rates

In these uncertain times, travellers are looking for extra flexibility. As hoteliers, you need to cater to the ever-changing guest expectation to drive demand to your property.

eRevMax offer seamless connectivity to multiple channel partners to expand your online brand visibility. With the growth in domestic tourism, Booking.com is expecting almost 74% of bookings to come from a mobile phone. Adding a mobile rate to your property will increase your visibility with these customers and unlock your market potential with last-minute mobile bookings. You can update Mobile Rates on Booking.com directly from RateTiger.

The use of mobile in emerging markets has changed how travel is searched and booked and by managing mobile rates, you too can improve reservations coming from mobile bookers.

Did you know?

  • 80% of travellers use a mobile app when researching a trip*
  • 50% of accommodation searches and bookings are made on mobile*
  • Mobile rates give partners 28% more bookings from mobile traffic*
  • 2-in-3 mobile bookings are made by Millennials or younger customers. Everyone might search from mobile but Millennials book.

What is Mobile Rate?

A Mobile Rate is a special discounted rate that’s only visible when someone uses Booking.com’s app or accesses Booking.com’s website using a mobile browser. You can use Mobile Rates to increase your bookings from mobile devices by up to 28%. Mobile Rates are active throughout the year.

How does your business benefit from Booking.com’s mobile rate?

Attract more bookings

Offering mobile rate drives more potential guests to your property page.

Mobile rates on average give partners 26% more bookings from mobile customers.

Mobile rates on average give partners 3% higher click-through rate from search results to the hotel page.

Stand out in searches

Once you activate the feature, a special badge will appear next to your property in search results and on your property page and during the booking process.

Position your property to digital natives who share experiences via social media.

Target mobile users with a special discount to encourage them to book your property immediately while they are on mobile.

Better price, better reviews, better ranking

Two-thirds of mobile bookings are made by millennials – who write more reviews than any other traveller segment. Attracting these bookers can positively impact your overall ranking on Booking.com.

Millennial smartphone ownership is rising: >94% in advanced economies, and >62% in emerging economies*. Attract this customer base with a special discount.

Avoid attention shifts to a competitor when they change device and start a new search process.

How Mobile Rates work?

  • Mobile rates are only visible to guests on mobile devices (on both the Booking.com app and mobile browsers).
  • A minimum 10% discount is recommended.
  • Mobile rates apply to all your rooms and rate plans. The discount combines with discounts for the Genius programme, as well as any other promotions you have set up. However, it does not add on to Country rate or Limited-time Deal.
  • You can set up 30 blackout days per calendar year.

The majority of reservations on Booking.com’s platform is made using mobile devices, so offering a Mobile Rate helps you tap into this large group of potential guests. Mobile Rates can also help you target millennials. The property can activate, edit and deactivate the mobile rates any times.

Creating Mobile Rates via RateTiger

If you do not already have a Mobile Rate set up for Booking.com, you can easily create one using through RateTiger.

  • Log in to your RateTiger platform – https://live.ratetiger.com/#/login
  • In the main dashboard, you will see the Promotions tile. Click on Create Promotion to go to the Promotions page.
  • On this page, select Mobile Promo and then select the channel – Booking-XML
  • Input the discount / promo and click on Create. The Mobile Rate gets created for Booking.com.

You can always update the settings of your Mobile Rates or deactivate them so that potential guests no longer see them.

Lastly there are a host of additional solutions through which your property can benefit and attract more bookings. You can get full details of the Booking.com Recovery Toolkit on the partner page.

RateTiger, powered by LiveOS, provides rate shopping, channel management, booking engine and online distribution solutions to hotels worldwide. It offers 99.9% system uptime and is security certified under ISO, PCI and GDPR compliant. eRevMax continues to expand its partner base through new integrations to offer hoteliers seamless connections across different systems including PMSs, CRSs, OTAs, Metasearch channels, GDS, Wholesalers and offline tour operators among others.

Subscribe to RateTiger today and start using this feature. Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

 

 

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Travel Tech EMEA Day 2 – Online Sales and Distribution – Demand generation strategies

For over nine months now, the hotel industry is in a survival mode. The global hospitality industry has been facing its worst crisis, and with Europe again going for stricter restrictions and lockdown, hoteliers are grappling with the distribution challenge. The revenue needed to stay afloat in business is putting pressure on hotels to focus on occupancy. However, the long-term profitability requires a hard look at the distribution approach given the traditional channel-mix has become a thing of past.

As seen in the past crisis of 2008, this is also the time for hoteliers to rely on OTAs for driving demand in the post pandemic world. A smart distribution manager would also ensure there is no brand dilution due to price cutting. With guest behaviour going through a radical shift, hotels need to adapt to changes, and focus on the value addition through transparency, visibility, promotions and personalized communication on key channels while preventing inventory leak.

In today’s TRAVEL TECH EMEA Day 2 session, HS LATAM Founder Vinicius Geraldo joins Lybra- Zucchetti’s Jennifer Nagy and FunnelTV’s  Enzo Aita to discuss Online Sales and Distribution – Demand generation strategies in difficult times, with our panelists – Francine Heywood from OTA Insight, Rudi Azevedo from RM_Academy, James Bishop from SiteMinder and Claudio Limacher from YieldPlanet. Do join the session – https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/6930318956520107533

 

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Travel Tech EMEA Day 1 – The New Normal of Pricing Strategy

With the second phase of lock-down and restrictions in many countries in Europe, the hotel industry is again facing confusion and uncertainty. The pandemic has made the job of the hotel revenue manager even more difficult. With historical demand patterns, key metrics for forecasting becoming obsolete, hotels need to overhaul their traditional revenue management technology.

Historically, every time the industry has hit a crisis, many hoteliers resort to discounting in order to stimulate demand. However, experts warn that price cut is not the solution. Far from the easy way of price war, it is time for the hospitality industry to reset the traditional way of revenue management and rebuild a recession-proof pricing strategy.

In today’s session at the Travel Tech EMEA, founder Vinicius Geraldo will be discussing all this and more with Paula Carreirao. Joining them on the panel is Damiano Zennaro from IDeaS Revenue Solutions, Erik Muñoz from Lybra | Assistant RMS, Fernando J. Cuesta from Amadeus and Philip Niemann from Atomize. Do join the exciting session on Revenue Management: The new normal of pricing strategy. Register now if you haven’t yet – https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/6930318956520107533

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5 things to look for when switching your Booking Engine

These days it is as important for hospitality businesses to have a website of their own as their brand name. Direct booking means more profit, and that is only possible when you can offer booking capability in your website. Whether you have a small hotel in a quiet town or an independent boutique hotel or managing hotel chains in some of the best destinations across the world, you have to show your presence through your website.

And not just a website, but a site which shows your brand ethos and value proposition to grab the attention of your target market and makes travelers interested enough to drive bookings.

To make your hotel brand site visible, hotels need to have a beautifully designed website. Stunning hotel website that is rich in content can help attract potential travellers and influence them to book a room. Attractive images and strong content play a vital role in hotel’s website search engine ranking.

What is a Hotel Booking Engine?

The Internet Booking Engine or Hotel Booking Engine is an application that allows customers to book online directly on the hotel brand website. Here are some important factors that hotels need to take into account when switching their booking engine –

Customizable and Scalable – A booking engine should be powered with advanced customization capabilities including description, amenities, media, color, theme, search engine optimization and more. RateTiger Booking Engine powered by LiveOS is one of the most advanced solutions available in the market that helps you win more direct business. The product has flexible pricing model to manage costs for new and existing bookings while increasing revenues.

Multi-lingual and Multi-currency – Hospitality industry is one of the most diverse in the world. Since it involves a wide variety of customers from different regions and countries globally, hotels should make the booking process smooth for the customers without any language barriers as well as supporting multiple currencies.

Plug & Play – connect to your website easily– This feature of RateTiger’ s booking engine, will allow hoteliers to set up the booking engine easily. An online booking engine works by plugging into your hotel website and processing secure online reservations made through the website. The data is then passed onto your property management system so you can access and manage the bookings seamlessly.

Integrations with third party PMS / CRS / RMS – Managing room rates and availability on your brand website has never been this transparent.  You are always just one click away in making updates to your rate plans, room types, policies and hot dates across any channel(s). Auto-sync rates and availability with seamless integrations to your PMS/ CRS/RMS or channel manager.

Data safety and security – When guests are making bookings, a hotel’s booking engine should securely accept the credit card/ net banking payments. Streamline your payment process with a seamless and secure, PCI compliant payment gateway.

RateTiger Booking Engine, powered by LiveOS, is a next-generation online reservation solution that enables hotels to offer direct bookings from brand and mobile sites. It offers simple, elegant and easy-to-use interface for seamless guest experience.

RateTiger offers multiple solutions including CRS / Channel management capabilities, Booking Engine, Rate Shopper, GDS & Metasearch management, Website development, and Business Analytics for individual and chain hotels, all from one integrated platform.

Make your website your most profitable booking channel! Contact us for a ‘no-obligation’ demo and free trial today – https://www.erevmax.com/erevmax-contact.html

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Introducing Promotions for Booking.com through RateTiger CRS

RateTiger Central Reservation System has been enhanced allowing users to create and manage promotions for Booking.com directly from their RateTiger dashboard. Promotions are special prices that a property can offer during a certain time window, or to a certain type of booker. In RateTiger Settings, they appear under the Promotions tab in the Inventory Module.

On booking.com, hotels can create three types of Promotions from their RateTiger dashboard – Basic Deal, Mobile Rate and Profile Rate.

Basic Deal Promotion:

  • Easy and fully customizable promotion, which will give the guest a discount on selected rooms and rates.
  • Customize the promotion for everyone or members only
  • Control on MLOS, Dates and Room Type
  • Hotels can run the promotion for various Rateplan and Payment options

Mobile Rate Promotion: Options for-

  • an app only rate- i.e, guests booking (only) through Booking.com mobile app would get this discount
  • dot rate and t.dot rate- i.e, guests booking through the Booking.com website on their mobile browser

Profile Rate Promotion:

  • Target the promotion to a certain set of guests
  • Discount can be displayed only to verified, logged-in business travelers, and will apply to all your room types, rates and dates except excluded.

Monitor your Promotions:

  • On your RateTiger dashboard, the View and Apply Promotion widget provides a detailed report of all the existing promotions and allow users to modify / deactivate a campaign.

RateTiger CRS, powered by LiveOS, is the next-generation reservation management platform for hotel revenue managers to manage multiple distribution channels including web, mobile, voice, travel agent and online travel agent (OTA) channels.

This is a very exciting opportunity as this marks the start of a series of upcoming releases, to give hotels different ways to create and sell Promotions on multiple platforms through RateTiger.

Get connected to RateTiger today and start selling promotions. Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

 

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How Marketing can help hotels in the ‘new normal’

With Covid-19 having affected every sector, simple things like traveling and eating out will never be the same again. However, even during these hard times, we tend to look for light at the end of the tunnel. As the hospitality sector is slowly reopening, hotels need dynamic marketing, communication and branding to gain guest confidence.

It is time for hotels to relook at their marketing strategies. Customer preference and behaviour have undergone a drastic shift. Their spending pattern has become more conservative. While cost-rationalization is a concern, there are still some marketing actions hotels can follow to get themselves ready for recovery.

It is critical not to go dark during this period but to keep proactive communication ongoing with your retail & corporate customers and channel partners.

Here are few tips to make the most use of marketing teams during this time of uncertainty –

  1. Communication, communication and communication. There is a reason they are called guests, and not customers in a hotel. This is the time to reach out to them. While you should be utilizing your social media / email and other channels, do not forget the old way of calling your loyal guests and partners to enquire about their well-being.  Share the measures you are taking to ensure safe environment.
  2. Your employees are your biggest brand ambassadors. Keep your employees active on social media, encourage them to share their experiences. Bring the human element in your hotel to showcase your core values.
  3. As you prepare to reopen, do an audit of your website content. That famous buffet would not be such a big draw now, nor will be the Saturday DJ Night. People are concerned about safety and social distancing. Explore what you can offer instead. The focus is on family, health and wellbeing. Experiences will prevail over pleasures. Create your packages around that.
  4. This is also the time to update your website assets. Post video and images of your sanitization process. Your housekeeping staffs are going to be your key player in gaining guest confidence.
  5. While taking recovery plan into action, it is important for hoteliers to know about the revenue management strategy and pricing strategy. In these uncertain times, traveler confidence is at an all-time low. A flexible cancellation policy will go a long way in attracting probable guests.
  6. This is also time for hotels to respond to reviews they have missed earlier due to work constraint. Create a review policy and reply to guest feedback with measures you are implementing to address their concerns.

Focus on the future and think what we can do to prepare for recovery. In times of crisis, it is even more important for hoteliers to maintain a public image, have a strong presence in social media, regular contact with clients and partners, to keep distribution channels populated with offers and rates they normally provide, even as business remains slow.

It is imperative to have the right technology partners that can help you update your hotel’s online content, rates and inventory across multiple channels effectively and seamlessly. Considered one of the best hotel channel managers in the market, RateTiger is integrated with more than 400 OTAs and works closely with 9000 hotels globally. It is the distribution connectivity partner of choice for large hotel groups, mid-scale chains as well as independent properties in both luxury and budget segment worldwide.

Connect with us for your connectivity needs to make the most of hotel online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

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What are the Best Practices for Creating a Google Hotel Ads Campaign?

Google Hotel Ads has emerged as an important channel for hoteliers to improve online exposure of their properties. In this blog, we list out some of the best practices that are involved with the creation of a Google hotel ads campaign.

What are the Best Practices for Creating a Google Hotel Ads Campaign

About 4.5 billion searches are made on Google every day, making it essential for every business to have presence on the platform. Over the last few years, Google Hotel Ads has emerged as the most popular platform in the metasearch space.  Which for years have been dominated by the OTAs. GHA which aggregates your hotel rates from participating OTAs and brand website and displays your hotel rates and availability on Google, across desktops, tablets, and mobile devices? Find out about some of the best practices for the creation of a Google hotel ads campaign.

Familiarize yourself with the interface

In order to be successful with Google hotel ads, it is essential to be familiar with the interface and know what goes into it. The sign-up process is quite similar to Google PPC campaign. Hotels need to create a Google Hotel Center account to send and manage hotel rates and availability across Google. The interface is user-friendly, effective and efficient. Once you have listed your property, connect your prices and availability to your ads by linking your Hotel Center account to a Google Ads account and start advertising.

Use data to your benefit

Data that is recorded by Google systems lets you pinpoint those things that are/are not working. Reports every week are offered in detail, and how your campaign is proceeding in each device. Make use of opportunity reports every week to detect missed opportunities. Know about the areas that you might have improved on, and prepare better for bid optimization in the following round.

With conversion tracking, you can exactly find out what happens when anyone visits your site. You can get information on cost per acquisition, how long a person stays in the accommodation and whether or not they booked a room. The use of this information and other performance metrics for the adjustment of Google hotel ads booking campaign strategies can help you to derive the best from your experience of Google Hotel Ads.

Group hotels and manage bids better

In case you are operating bids for more than one hotel property, group the properties together. This can let you manage the same in a more efficient way and optimize returns on investment. The principles happen to be the same for each hotel property that is part of the group. When you structure bids, you have to remember that.

Optimize your ads

For optimizing your ad spends, Google recommends hotels to provide entire inventory to Hotel Ads along with room and package Meta data. The details comprise of data about occupancy levels and rooms, and all the updated prices and active bids can ensure accuracy of prices. The ads which notch up the best numbers are generally those that offer the most information. Optimized ad can help hotels to have much better business and increase the bottom line.

Google Hotel Ads campaigns can provide future travelers with the chance to reserve a hotel room at many important hotels all through their research. Wherever a user makes decisions related to travel, hotel ads are surfaced by Google to assist them in the assessment of booking options and pricing available to them.

Find Hotel channel manager and Online Distribution.