Two Key Factors Which Affect Hotel Direct Bookings

Aró Digital is a data driven company and for our clients we measure over 180 metrics which underpin how well their book direct strategy performs. 

In previous blogs we have highlighted factors such as online reputation, homepage design and website engagement and how crucial they are in a high performing direct booking plan. 

As travellers start to return to luxury, independent hotels it is critical to capture their bookings via your own website booking engine. 

This ensures you are utilising the lowest cost channel of acquisition and remain in control of the guest.

In this article I am going to look at two other vital considerations for direct bookings - brand PPC and email marketing. 

  

• Brand PPC

Although it is essential to have your SEO optimised to drive organic (non paid) traffic, it can only do so much. 

The OTAs will bid on your brand, even if you're not signed up with them, and to compete you must have a brand PPC campaign. 

If you already have one, do you know the return on your investment?

 

Chub Cay Resort in the Bahamas recently signed up with Aró. 

The new site is not live yet but we have been running their brand PPC for 4 months. 

In that time their return on ad spend (ROAS) has increased from 15:1 to 104:1 i.e. for every $1 they spend on PPC ads they get $104 back in direct bookings. 

Brand PPC is a key plank of Aró Digital’s marketing services and on average our clients’ ROAS is over 50:1.

• Email marketing

Email marketing is not just about informing guests of your services or sending out pre-stay emails or ezines. 

With a great system you can convert OTA bookers into direct bookers. 

We recommend having CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software as part of a direct book strategy. 

A good CRM will connect to the hotel PMS and enable you to correspond directly with all bookers, not just those who came via your booking engine.

For example, it can pull in email addresses via the PMS from bookings which came from a non-direct channel. 

You can then email these customers directly and offer them a value add (free drink, meal deal, spa pass) if they sign up with their personal email to your subscription service.

 

We recently came across this great article from Experience Hotel. 

They are a CRM provider and were able to analyse over 11 million guest emails. 

It provides a fascinating insight into what type of emails engage best and even what type drive most revenue.

It is not easy to implement the best direct booking strategy but the return in terms of increased revenue and profit is immense. 

If you are unsure how to proceed, please contact us. We are the experts and guarantee to grow your own website bookings.