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Direct bookings are reservations guests confirm directly with a property without using an online travel agency (OTA) or 3rd party intermediary. Direct bookings are beneficial because they connect lodging businesses directly with potential customers and increase hotel revenue through money saved from OTA commissions.
And yet, many hotels overlook metasearch in their digital marketing strategy , missing out on opportunities to reach a broader segment of travelers, compete for business with online travel agencies (OTAs), and drive direct bookings. Much like with OTAs, the search results then display a list of available hotels and rates in the destination.
Segmenting the hotel’s advertising audiences into groups with similar characteristics creates opportunities for tailored messaging to maximize your cost-per-click ad dollars —and your profits. Value-Added Services and Upselling Armed with data about your customer base, targeting guests with upsell opportunities is easy.
Unlike Google’s Free Booking Links, this feature is only available to hoteliers; OTAs and resellers can not participate. If you’re listed on OTAs, you’re probably already listed on metasearch channels too. In the cost-per-click model (CPC), the hotel pays the amount it bids for each click.
That said, one has to ask: why are so many hotels’ margins still being eroded away by OTAs ? The growth of metasearch OTAs often outperform individual hotels in metasearch positioning and cost-per-click (CPC) performance. Some OTAs still use cached pricing.
She clicks on the link to your hotel booking engine from the site, but ultimately she goes to Booking.com because it’s showing the lowest price, and she books there. Each of these touchpoints can come with costs to your hotel. Costs can be direct or indirect, fixed or variable. As you can see, things can get complicated.
The Golden 20% I seriously think the OTAs are like heroin for hotels and its a pretty tough habit to kick. Please dont misunderstand, I do genuinely feel that OTAs have a part to play in the marketing mix. However, if you are able to sell rooms for the hotel direct for less than that OTA commission of 20% then why not?
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