HOTELMARKETING.COM

The move from price to value in hotel direct bookings

July 02, 2012 | Hotel Marketing

Just as OTAs are creating incentives for consumers to book with, hotels must make sure that their website is more compelling than any other to capture all visitors.
Hotel marketers are challenged to find creative ways to incentivise guests to book direct while keeping parity.

Travellers are looking for the highest perceived value for the price they are willing to pay for a hotel room. When a customer shops online, he or she can filter by price and star rating to find the properties that will best suit his needs and budget, and will choose the hotel with the highest perceived value. Online the perceived value is more important than the real value since most of the clients are not familiar with the hotel or the destination yet.

Value does not mean the lowest price; instead value is the perfect rate or a competitive price for that very moment - high enough to increase revenues and low enough to increase bookings.

A run-of-house strategy can help you steal market share from other hotels by using your base rooms as a ‘hook’ to capture the business of the consumer and later up-sell them on other sources of revenue. Once you have captured the booking, it becomes much easier for you to get additional incremental revenue from their booking. A good example - offer them the chance to upgrade to a better room category for a small surcharge at check-in. Many times, the guests will prepay for their accommodation when booking and by the time they arrive at the hotel, paying a little extra for an upgrade is not as steep (as paying for everything together upon check-in).

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