The majority of people plan and book their holidays online. To ensure visitors stay the night at your accommodation business, it thus needs to be both discoverable and bookable.
When you want to increase your bookings, it's important to improve being discoverable and bookable in tandem.
After all, there’s not much sense in allowing customers to book online if they don’t know you exist. It also doesn’t work to attract large numbers of customers online if they can’t book online.
A website is discoverable if it's designed to be easily found by users via a search engine, within an application, or on another website.
It’s all about how easy it is for a user to find your business online. Whether that’s when they’re searching generally, for example "hostels in Edinburgh", or specifically for the name of your business.
Bookable means that there should be no need to contact the accommodation provider to confirm the booking.
You're bookable if a customer can book your accommodation online before they arrive, be it a room, a camping pitch, or a self-catering cottage.
Get your pricing and availability updated as far ahead as possible. The further people travel, the further in advance they book. Consider at least one year’s availability.
Make your booking button on your website has a clear call-to-action to book. Ideally, it should be as visible as possible on every webpage at all stages of a customer’s journey.
Build in upselling opportunities in your shopping cart. Before they complete their purchase, let your customers add on breakfast, a bottle of champagne, or any other extras you might offer.
Do try to keep the primary booking experience as simple as possible though.
Go through the user journey yourself regularly and check for barriers or breakages. This helps you keep on top of your functionality and avoid bad experiences for potential customers.
Set up e-commerce analytics and goals. This allows you to see which target audience is driving the most revenue and which areas of investment give you the best return.
Direct booking is the most profitable form overall. But to stay competitive, you might also need to list your property on other booking websites. This is why sites such as TripAdvisor, Expedia and Booking.com can be so important.
Look into what your competitors are doing on those sites and emulate them.
Let’s look now at what technology you can put in place to be both discoverable and bookable. You may be using certain tools already, and some will give you access to certain features but not all.
You have a dedicated website with content about your business (in addition to a social media presence).
Customers can:
You have a business website with a web booking engine.
Examples include Eviivo, Freetobook, Supercontrol, Beds24, Queensborough Group and SiteMinder.
Some web booking engines are integrated with visitscotland.com. This enables your business to display:
live availability
real-time pricing
a "book now" button on your free listing and in live availability search results on the site
Customers can:
read about your business
check availability of your accommodation on the dates they want
book your accommodation
pay for their stay
You can do this by using a web booking engine that:
will display live availability
accept online bookings through your website
You have a business website with a web booking engine, and a separate listing with an online travel agent. Examples include Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Airbnb and HomeAway.
Are you not using a channel manager? (explained in stage 4) Then you'd need to update your availability and price on your own website and for each online travel agent's site you have a listing on.
You may be able to use your own web booking engine to display your prices directly alongside the agent's prices.
Metasearch sites will usually pull your availability and pricing info directly from the agent.
As such, your accommodation will gain greater exposure online. Potential customers will also have more chance of finding you.
Customers can:
read about your business
check availability of your accommodation on the dates they want
book your accommodation
pay for their stay
also check availability, book and pay on the online travel agent's website
The benefit of working with an online travel agent is that you will be discoverable and bookable on both the agent's and metasearch sites.
A metasearch site is a comparison site. Think of Google Hotels, Kayak, Trivago, TripAdvisor, and Skyscanner.
It lets customers compare prices for your accommodation across different websites. This includes the online travel agent's websites and (sometimes) your own website.
You have a website and a web booking engine with channel manager functionality.
This allows you to distribute availability and pricing to online travel agencies and metasearch sites. In other words, whenever you update the availability and pricing on your own website, it pulls through everywhere at once.
The alternative would be updating information on multiple different platforms with different logins.
There can be costs associated with using channel managers. They may charge you with a fee or commission via your web booking engine. But it could be worth that investment if:
it makes your accommodation business more visible
saves you time
reduces the chances of double bookings
Customers can:
read about your business
check availability of your service on the dates they want
book your service
pay for your service
find your business on travel sites
find your business on metasearch sites
And you can more easily distribute your inventory and rates across multiple sites.
Check which online booking system best meets your business requirements.
We don’t endorse or recommend any system over another. The following list represents only a small fraction of booking systems available. The ones included have Scottish clients or account managers working in Scotland.
Certified API connections with:
Suitable for all accommodation types including:
Extra options:
SuperControl is integrated with this list of channels and more:
It’s best to do a bit of research to work out which channel manager functionality is right for your business. This is because they can increase the volume of bookings to your business, but charge a commission to do so.
Discover which functionalities each system provides and whether they line up with your business needs.
Check what online travel agent partnerships are in place. The three most common ones are Booking.com, Expedia, and Airbnb.
For some businesses, other smaller agencies may be more suitable if your target audience might use them more regularly.
Check what training and support is available for set up and maintenance.
Before coming to a decision, please consider the price of each web booking engine. Some systems will have a basic license, but might also charge a commission or additional features with added costs.
Some systems will have a basic license, a commission, or additional features with added costs.