The Expert Guide To Drive More

DIRECT BOOKINGS
Table of Contents
Part 1
• Intro - Direct bookings: A growing trend
• The post-pandemic traveller’s journey
to direct bookings
• Direct Bookings vs OTAs and Meta
Search Engine
• Why Direct Bookings?
Part 3
• Website optimisation: Is your shop
window doing its job well?
• STAAH products to help you in
revenue optimisation
• Get Google - Free booking links
through Google
Part 2
• Maximising conversions through an advanced
Booking Engine
• An ideal booking journey (Max Booking Engine)
• Booking Engine Reporting & Insights
Part 4
• Marketing strategy to drive Direct
Bookings
• Tools to boost Direct Bookings
(WatchMyRate, Smart Pricing)
• Type of Promotions/Packages to
attract guests
Conclusion
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DIRECT BOOKINGS:
A growing trend
Numerous reports suggest that hotels have seen a
swing towards the guests that are booking direct.
There are various reasons for this, ranging from trust
for brands that that existed in the pre-pandemic era or
guests visiting websites of accommodation providers
to learn more about the safety and hygiene protocols
are in place.

Either way, hotels are experiencing a shift to direct

bookings, something they've been desperate to
achieve since a long time. For hoteliers, this is one
trend everyone needs to embrace.

But how? What does it take to build a “book direct”

strategy?
In this e-book, we share tips and ideas on how
you can attract more guests to your hotel,
directly and lower your hefty commission bills.

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The post-pandemic
traveller’s journey to
DIRECT BOOKINGS
It is a well-documented marketing belief that
ingrained shopping habits are hard to break – no
matter how powerful an ad campaign could be.
But, sometimes there comes a change in a
person’s life where old habits fall apart. A state of
flux takes over and redefines these habits. For
instance, the birth of a child can leave new
parents’ buying habits changed forever – or at
least for a long time.

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Covid-19
has been that state
of flux in the lives of
travellers worldwide
It has changed the way people travel, where they
travel, how they travel and how they book. Whilst
OTAs have played a huge role in recovery from the
pandemic, direct bookings have got a boost. For
hoteliers this has been a boon as it has enabled
them to become more strategic about their return
to business, and to set a foundation for better,
healthier distribution strategy in the long-term. A
strategy built on attracting, retaining and growing
guests on their own merit – directly.

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 Before we dig into
How to grow Direct Bookings
it is important to understand why this change is coming about.

Safety, health and hygiene
protocols bring the guests
to hotel website, triggering
increased direct bookings,
especially when there are
more benefits attached to
booking direct.
Loyal guests are imperative
for every hotel – your guests
are keen on supporting the
industry, especially if they
have an affinity directly or via
friends and family with a
property.
Consumer battles with
OTAs for refunds amidst the
pandemic has left some
brands bruised and guests
are looking for alternatives.

Local (domestic) travel boomed, Direct bookings offer great flexibility

reducing the need to book via as hoteliers are bending backwards
OTAs. to attract and retain guests.

With all signs pointing towards the growth of direct bookings, what can you do to get your fair
share of these lucrative, commission-free bookings? Read on.

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Direct Bookings vs
OTAs and Meta Search Engine

Direct Bookings
The low-cost way to get guests into the door. These are
bookings made directly through your website via your
Booking Engine. With no commission on them, hoteliers
are increasingly turning to optimize their website and
leverage direct marketing spend to pump up this
channel. Features such as WatchMyRate by STAAH and
ReviewMinder (an online reputation management tool)
are designed to improve your conversion rate via this
channel.

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 Online Travel Agents
and Metasearch
The big guys. The online billboard to reach millions of users
out to book their accommodation. Online Travel Agents
(OTAs) like Airbnb, Expedia, Booking.com, MakeMyTrip,
Agoda, and CTrip are among the many intermediaries that
bring in bulk of course, this reach and subsequent
bookings don’t come without a cost (the dreaded ‘C’ word
– commissions), something every hotelier tries to keep
under control.

A special mention here to Metasearch engines, another

disruptive channel that lets users compare prices from
OTAs and booking sites – all in one place. Some examples
of Metasearch are Google Hotel Ads, Trivago, TripAdvisor,
and Kayak bookings.

There are ways to increase your direct bookings without compromising your relationship
with OTAs. Try to strike a delicate balance between your OTA strategy and the direct
booking strategy. This is advisable because many potential guests come to your website
after they discover your brand on an OTA platform.

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WHY ?
DIRECT BOOKINGS

All hoteliers want

more direct bookings than any
other type of bookings because at
the end of the day that is full profit,
going directly into their pockets with
no third-party aggregators taking
a piece of the pie.

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Direct bookings are
the type of bookings
wherein guests reserve
rooms and services
directly through your
WEBSITE.
Believe it or not, research shows that 60% of visitors to OTAs visit your website. Customers will, in
addition to using the OTAs site, look at property’s website to search for more or get local information
before booking their stay.

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Maximising
conversions
through your
BOOKING ENGINE
A user-friendly online booking process is key
to increasing direct bookings through your
property’s website, so choosing a modern,
intuitive, secure, mobile-friendly online
booking engine is an important decision for
hotel operators. But the effort doesn’t end
there. It’s also important to make sure you’re
taking full advantage of the conversion-driving
features provided by your online booking
engine.

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Let’s dive into
what you need, to get the most out of
your booking engine.

Customise it to your brand. Connect it to your existing software

Incorporate your brand’s logo, images, colours
and styles into the booking engine for a
seamless visual and emotional connection for
the guests. This ensures confidence in the
booking is not lost at any step.
To ensure an integrated workflow for your
teams and a seamless user experience, make
sure your booking engine is connected to your
Property Management System (PMS), Channel
Manager and Payment Gateway. Having all
your software cloud-based makes integration
simpler and the syncing of all systems almost
seamlessly.

Keep your booking system up to date

Your Hotel booking system needs to be updated
with all room types and rate plans. Avoid making
your rate structures overly complicated. Make
sure all amenities and room facilities are added
and accurate.
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Rate parity
Rate parity may restrict what you can do to
room pricing. But, you can use features such
as packages and promo codes to your
advantage, luring the lookers to book. Both
features enable hoteliers to deliver greater
value to guests booking direct, without
breaching their rate parity agreements with
OTAs.
Smart Pricing
Smart pricing can also be enabled for a
particular target group within your STAAH
booking engine, while Last Minute Deals is a
feature that aims to maximise occupancy.
Flexible bookings and cancellation policy
The cancellation policy must be clearly highlighted
in your descriptions. Flexibility is a critical guest
requirement in today’s uncertain environment.
Add-ons
Add-ons are a simple way to increase revenue
when a guest is booking. Make sure you
leverage this feature.
Central Reservation System (CRS)
CRS is another feature that not just allows
hoteliers to manage room availability and
rates, but also make a reservation.
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An Ideal
Booking Journey

It is important to ensure booking via laptop as well as mobile phones is secure and has as few steps as
possible. STAAH’s PCI-certified Max Booking Engine has a three-step booking process – keeping it
simple and quick for users across devices. Other ways to make the booking process simple are
having multiple payment options, and currency converter.

STAAH MAX Booking Engine

is fully customisable to your brand and property website, offering users a
simple and intuitive reservation process, integrated with React themes.

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 Booking Engine Reporting & Insights

Reporting helps the accommodation providers in pricing strategy, forecasting the demand,
targeting the right audience and conversion matrix. Reporting and Insights also guide them on
data-driven decision-making.

The Booking Engine Analytics provides an overview of the visitors to your Booking platform and the
booking journey. It also captures other insightful data and information such as; browser details, device,
country statistics, etc. that helps the accommodation owners understand their booking trends.

The STAAH Max Booking Engine Funnel shows detailed tier-wise analytics of the booking journey:
Visitors, Active or Engaged visitors and Conversions –basically how many of them actually
did the booking.

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 WEBSITE OPTIMISATION:
Is your shop window doing its job well?

Your website is your property’s shop window. How well it is doing its job can be measured by user
engagement on the site and conversion rates. Is your website converting lookers into bookers?

Here are some actionable insights to make your website work harder to convert bookings.

SAFE,
SECURE BROWSING
For Secure browsing an up-to-date
SSL certification is a must. No one wants
to visit unsecure websites. Secure
payments are critical too. Always ensure
that your booking widget follows the
highest security protocols.
BUILD AN ENGAGING,
INFORMATIVE AND ENSURE YOUR WEBSITE
EASY-TO-NAVIGATE IS MOBILE FRIENDLY
HOMEPAGE
Today majority of travellers book hotels
Properties need to have an engaging home on-the-go, using their mobile phones.
page along with other key pages of the Hence having a mobile responsive
website. This includes your cancellation website is a must.
and booking policies, attractive images,
social proof (online reviews) and bold
call-to-actions to your booking engine.
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A SEAMLESS
BOOKING EXPERIENCE
Your booking engine or widget must
plug right into your website and brand.
It is important for the booking widget
to be customisable as per your brand,
including features such as URL
masking (when your booking engine
URL remains the same as your website
and doesn’t change to a third party
URL) for increased user confidence.
Fewer the clicks to a booking, the
better.
BOOKING ENGINE
PLACEMENT
This point is important enough to be
called out on its own. If a user has to
spend time finding how to book a room on
your property, you’ve lost the booking!
Place your booking engine centre, front,
top – whatever makes it the most
important thing on your website. Link to
your booking engine frequently from
content on the site – promotional
banners and pop-ups are a great option.
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CONTENT
Remember, the post pandemic
traveller has a high safety and health &
hygiene consideration. Your policies on
this subject should be easily
accessible. Flexible bookings and
cancellation policies are also important
and calling them out is imperative.
Of course, these functional content
needs aside, fill your website with rich
images and videos that inspire users to
book now.
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 Get Google
Get Free Booking Links through Google
Maximize your reach and drive more direct bookings
with Free Booking Links. Push your rates and
availability in real-time on Google Search

Make the most out of STAAH’s Get Google feature

Get Google helps you appear in Google hotel search just below paid ads, maximizing your visibility
and helping you drive direct bookings.
STAAH Booking Engine has direct connection with Google, enabling properties push their rates and
availability in real-time and helping them compete for a higher share of commission-free direct
bookings. This feature is available only for STAAH Booking Engine customers and can be enabled
from the extranet.

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Marketing strategy
to drive direct bookings

You’ve got a great Booking Engine and optimised it to make

lookers into bookers.

But, how do you get more people looking at your booking engine?
Guests often visit a hotel’s website before making a booking. The job of marketing to attract direct
bookings doesn’t end there. To remain competitive, it is important to be seen at the right place/s and at
the right time, i.e. have an effective digital marketing strategy in place.
Let’s dive into what forms a successful digital marketing strategy to drive direct bookings.

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 Audience insights and target market
Any successful business and marketing strategy
begins with understanding your guests – who are you
targeting? What do they look like? Where are they
based? What are their interests and habits? The more
you know, the more defined your channel strategy to
find and convert these audiences into guests.
Look into your PMS, channel manager, booking
engine and website analytics for insights that can
help piece together this information before being
applied to external channels to attract them to your
booking platform. Your target audience should define
which channels you advertise on and which OTAs you
partner with.
Set your objectives
So, here’s the deal: you can’t make a roadmap if you
don’t know where you’re going! When you’ve made
efforts to figure out where you stand, it’s time to
determine a clear set of objectives. Remember your
strategy should be collaborative – created in
consultation with key partners and your staff. It also
needs to be a living document that evolves with the
volatility of the market.
Find and define your unique proposition
There are a number of properties out there. What sets
you apart? This must form the crux of all your
communications and storytelling.
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 Focus on the traffic acquisition channels
Guest journey from awareness to booking is multidimensional. Someone may get inspired by a friend’s social
media post, while another begins the journey on an OTA or a search engine. As a hotelier you need to be
present, consistently across all key channels.

OTAs Pay per click (PPC) Social channels

OTAs are your billboards to
acquire guests. Excellent
pictures and descriptions are
critical to maintaining your
brand on these channels.
While you may never be at par
with the OTAs when it comes
to PPC, maintaining some
brand presence is essential.
Social channels, a great way to
create authentic conversations
about your property. By
leveraging guest interactions,
you can build great conversations
and create brand advocates.

Search Engine Google hotel search Retargeting

Optimisation (SEO)
With more than 80% of bookings
beginning with a search, the
importance of ranking high isn’t
lost on anyone. It may be a slow
process but through good
technique and content, you can
build up your organic search
ranking.
Google hotel search is now
free for hoteliers with partner
booking engines; STAAH being
one. Via STAAH’s Get Google
feature, you can push out live
rates and availability and make
the most of the search giant’s
hotel search capability.
Reaching out to customers
who have ‘touched’ your brand
through either of the channels,
or have been your guests, has
huge potential for success.
Remarketing Ads on Google,
Facebook or Instagram can
prove to be effective for
engaging these users.

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 Leverage your website
Leverage your website to its full potential with good
content and a fantastic user experience, including for
mobile visitors. Your booking engine plays a critical
conversion role and features such as WatchMyRate by
STAAH that allow guests to compare rates with OTAs
in real-time encourages them to stay on your website
and book. Push out package rates and promotions on
your own website as advertising here is free and can
be very effective if guests see value.
Email
Email Communication is a personalised way to reach
out to guests. As you understand their interests,
offers can be crafted to suit these interests. Use data
from your PMS and booking engine to understand
guest behaviour. Survey your guests to understand
them better and leverage this information in your
email campaigns.
Upsell with gift vouchers
Vouchers are a great revenue source for hoteliers
that can work away in the background on your
website and email channel. Vouchers generate
instant cashflow, helping you grow your revenue.
Build social proof
Online reviews matter and if anyone else says
otherwise, ignore them. More than 90% of your guests
will read an online review before booking. Make sure
you harness the power of these reviews in your
marketing by investing in the right tools, such as
STAAH’s Review Minder.
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 Tools to boost
Direct Bookings

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WatchMyRate Increase conversion from your website with

Widget WatchMyRate. It seamlessly integrates with STAAH

Booking Engine. It displays your website’s lowest rate
as well as the lowest rate on other websites, for the
selected date.

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Smart Pricing
Smart pricing is the perfect tool that
would help you in setting up discounted
rates easily and attract visitors to book
directly from your property website.
Advance purchase
Set discounts to attract early bookers
Mobile device
Identify and target the ‘bookers’ by setting
discounts on mobile phones
Multi nights
Discounts for longer staying guests
Region
Increase bookings by targeting guests
from specific region/ IP address
Pay Now
Encourage customers to pay at the time
of booking by offering a discount
Last-Minute Deals
Discounts for Last-minute bookers
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Sell via
Promo codes/Add Ons
in the Booking Engine

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 Benefits of Smart Pricing Feature

Drive Direct Bookings Increase conversion Reduce your Create Urgency

OTA Commissions

Promote Special Offers Identify Target Audience Generate revenue

These seven marketing strategies are the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more to say about the modern
guest and how their habits and expectations have changed. If you want your Booking Engine to be your Top
Performing Channel, get in touch with our Sales representative today.

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To sum it up
Reducing the amount of dependency on OTAs and
increasing direct booking revenue can create a
higher bottom line for your property. Bear in mind
though, that the best reservation is the one that
pays you the most in value (Total RevPAR) and was
acquired at the least cost of expense and means
(Cost of Acquisition or CaC). Sometimes the
commission costs paid to OTAs can be less than
costs incurred on an individual marketing campaign.
Remember to track these costs as you test different
ways to drive direct bookings and find your most
effective channel mix.

Increasing hotel direct bookings requires cleverness

and creativity, but it will be well worth it when you
start driving more direct bookings and keeping more
of your revenue than ever before. The strategies
mentioned in this guide are by no way an exhaustive
list, but we hope they will add to your tool kit and
help grow your business, generate brand awareness
and increase direct bookings.

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Visit us at: www.staah.com l Email: marketing@staah.com

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