Transcript
Introduction to booking engines
Hello, everyone. Welcome back. This week, I wanna talk about booking engines. I think, it's it's one of the very first products that we ever built because we had to get a hotel life and we had to build a booking engine. And through that process, we learned so much.
The booking engine is probably one of your most important tools to get right because, a booking made through your booking engine is significantly more affordable than a booking made through an OTA where you pay eighteen to twenty three percent commission.
So like, what does good look like? And I'll talk through the basics of what a great booking engine should do, what it shouldn't do, how do you implement it in the website, how do you drive traffic into it, and what how do you measure that conversion?
Secondly, I'll give some real examples. We've got about five thousand plus customers running on Mews today. So there are some beautiful examples of hotels that have really got this right and that have gone beyond just selling rooms to other services, other products.
And I think it's sometimes you learn just by watching what great hotels do.
Thirdly, let's talk about some of those ancillary services because generally a booking engine is used to just sell rooms, but you can go beyond it and hopefully drive more revenue from the same customers already at booking stage. And then lastly, how do you manage groups through a booking engine? Because groups are still very painful when you book a wedding and you have individual call in for guests making their reservations. All of that can be automated through great booking engines as well. So bear with me. We're gonna take about twenty minutes to talk through all of these different, topics, and I hope you enjoy it. Thanks.
Chapter
How to implement a booking engine on your website
Right. Let's talk about implementing a booking engine in your website and what are some of the things that you should look out for, and some of the things you should avoid as you do this.
So I'll talk through some of these, settings or things to look for. In the next video, I'm actually gonna give some real examples. So I'm gonna dig into some of the websites to show some of the things that I've talked about, and shown how they've done that in their in the right way. So the first thing is, people enter your website.
Make sure that the book now button is always visible. So wherever you scroll on the website, that button should be floating. That should be visible on every page on the website.
Also, the color of the button needs to be in a contrasting color to the website because you want it to stand out. The the core purpose of your website is to get bookings. So the book now button is your most valuable button. Make sure that it stands out in opposing colors.
So then as you enter the booking engine, make sure that when I click that book now button, it actually opens inside your website. So what I often see with booking engines is that I click the button and it redirects me into whatever reservations, websites, etcetera.
What that what happens in the back end is basically you're telling Google, customers are coming into my website and within ten seconds they leave to go to a different website. And Google is like, oh, people are not that interested in this website. And you get downgraded in your ranking because you want people to spend time there. So a good modern booking engine should be embedded directly into your website so that when you click the book now button, the URL at the top of the page remains your URL of the website. So they're actually booking directly with you, and you're telling Google people people find this website really relevant because they're spending a lot of time on the website.
Chapter
Language and localization considerations
So now you've opened the booking engine, hopefully, in the language that the customer wants. So you can, there's all these tools that help, with IP tracking, knowing where customers are from, and then presetting that website into the language that they're coming in from. So already, for example, if this is an American coming into your website, you can set it to English American versus English British if they are coming in from the UK.
And it matters because the date format changes because an American will use a different date format than the British person coming in. And you don't want to drive confusion. So IP tracking is really important to switch to the different languages.
Also, make sure that you run a nationality statistics report from where customers are booking from. Most hotel websites will have the local language. So I'm in Amsterdam.
So I have my booking engine in Dutch and English. But in Amsterdam, we see a huge inflow of, for example, German tourists coming. So make sure that your website is translated in as many languages as possible. And today with AI and translation tools, there really is no excuse why you wouldn't do the translations. It is so simple to do.
Chapter
How to make good room descriptions
What I often see on the different room descriptions and the rate descriptions is that they are very long or they're very short.
And you wanna really make sure that you give enough information but do that in the most concise way possible without any confusion. And again, this is where AI comes in. So I use ChatGPT for a lot of these things when I need to write a bio for myself. I'm like, great.
Here's the information. Turn that into a really smart bio. And it's the same for your room descriptions. They need to be snappy, quick to understand, and AI is really good at this in multiple languages.
Then as you, work through the flow of the booking engine, the goal is to convert as fast as possible with as little confusion as possible. Customers want a really smooth journey. They don't want hurdles and they don't wanna get stuck because the moment you lose the attention of the user, they will go to another hotel or they'll go to booking dot com and make a booking there, but then you pay a high commission rate, which you don't wanna pay. So really work through the flow with different scenarios because the easiest scenario is saying, oh, I wanna book one room for one night, for one person.
That's an easy flow. But what if I wanna book two rooms and one of them is for two persons, one of them is for three persons with a child. Does the booking engine allow for that flow? Because if it doesn't, you're likely to lose that customer.
So really test the booking engine for multiple scenarios and whether there is friction.
So one of the things I often see on booking engines is when he gets to that checkout page, the last page where it says give me your details. What you really need at this point is an email address, a last name and a credit card number. Everything else you can ask at a later stage. So the more questions you ask the lower the conversion will be on the booking engine. So remove those questions because you'll have an online check-in, you'll have a kiosk check-in, you'll have a physical check-in. But the most important thing is converting that booking and not losing it to yet again the OTAs.
Chapter
Driving traffic to the booking engine
Another really smart way is to drive customers into the booking engine.
So you've got these tools like Triptease or Hotel Champ, and they sit inside your website, to help drive these visitors into the booking engine. So as they see you're interacting with the website, they'll say, hey. Would you like a special discount code to book direct on the website? And it it helps drive traffic, and it and it's really highly effective.
Have a rate strategy. Think about what rates do you want on the website. Less is more, and the lowest rate is powerful. So don't offer fifteen packages.
Offer two packages or offer even one rate. Because if you think about, the airlines, most of the time you just get a single rate. You get the nonrefundable rate. And And then if you want a flexible rate, it is significantly more expensive.
In hotels, we like to discount our fully flexible rate by ten, fifteen percent.
And it just isn't, a very attractive discount to buy a nonrefundable rate. So maybe lead with nonrefundable and not offer the flexible rate or make that difference bigger so that you capture the cash flow from the beginning.
And and just ensure that you don't confuse customers with too many rates because they will not understand what the differences between the different packages are.
Chapter
Competing with OTAs
Another great thing that I've seen hotels do to compete with the OTAs is to offer a better rate on your website. But we're obviously still worried about rate parity even though, the OTAs are in court and there's all these claims against them for not, it not being legal to have rate parity.
What you can do and what they do because when I come to the OTA website, they say log in with your Facebook accounts or with your Apple account. And the moment I press that button, it will log me in, and I get all these special rates that I don't get on the hotel website. You can do the same thing. So as I enter your website, the first screen you should show me is capture you know, get twenty percent discounts.
Just log in with your email address. The moment that I have my email address in, you can give that discount code or even already have it preloaded into the booking engine. That works in the same way as the OTAs do it. And that's a great way to avoid some of the rate parity issues that you have.
So these were the core basics, but let me now show you some of the great examples that we have here in Mews.
So you've got some really great customers, and I wanna just show some of the booking engines that we have with these customers.
And I'll I think it's in about four booking engines that I wanna open, and just talk through it. So bear with me as I go through this. So this one is the Drifter, which I think is in new in Christ Church, so New Zealand. One of the things I really like about this website is the first thing you see is saying, okay. You get a discount, fifty percent off. I'm not sure. Let me type that in.
Well and this basically is, like, how you compete with, like, the Booking. com Genius program where you also just log in with your Facebook page and then get all these exclusive offers. So the moment that press get the code, it will just change the the page, and it should give me there you go. Thanks for drifting. So now I can just copy that code, and I can just use that promo code directly in the booking engine here. So let's do that.
Book now.
What I talked about also in the the other previous video is that as I press book now, it re did not redirect me to some external website. It kept me inside the website. They beautifully embedded this inside the website. So that's a really nice way that they've done that.
So here you can see I've selected the twelfth until the thirteenth for one adult. I can go back and edit some of these things if I want to. So I can say, actually, I'm two adults. So you can constantly go back between the different stages.
And you see that there's, like, five stages, and we try to keep this really simple, always show where you're at, and and make sure that you have multiple photos of the rooms because people are looking to they're really shopping still at this point, and they want to make sure that which room they want to buy. You know, you see this one that obviously has much nicer rooms, like, much more spacious rooms. So I'm gonna show, rates on these ones.
So here you see that you have space to do larger descriptions. So I would definitely recommend to add a longer description here. And let's see if they've translated this into a different language. So, let's see if they've done German.
So they haven't done the translations. So what we do as a fallback is that the the core buttons, we have translators, but the hotel really should do the translations themselves for the different room types because we don't have those translations. But this is where AI comes in. So let me switch back to English British.
Chapter
The use of promotional rates and discounts
And here, you see also besides the room, and you see the rates that are being given, there's a promotional rate that has opened up because I've put in that special code. So there's the promotional rates, which is lower than the public rates, and then there's only one public rate. So they don't confuse customers with lots of different rate types. They just offer two rates and that's it. And clearly, you're gonna book this rate because it's the discount.
But I also really liked is this early check-in, and late checkout that already right now. Often, you book your flights before you book your hotel.
So you know that you're gonna arrive early. So already now you want to think, okay. I'd like to really check-in if I have an early landing. So this is how you can add a a a great upgrade already at this point.
So let's book this driftless rates.
It just says, okay. This is a summary. This is what we've got, two adults, etc
So this was the easy booking. But what if I have another room for single guests coming as well? So maybe I wanna add another room. So I can just go back to dates and say, right. I need one more room for one person, and that's just fine with just a a standard superior twin, and I will have again that same rates. So now you've got two categories, with you can even switch rates between them because maybe that one person isn't yet sure, so you can have a flexible rate on that person.
And that's an easy way to add multiple bookings.
And then the last page here is that checkout page. And again, do not ask too many questions because you will lose the booking if you are frustrating customers with too many questions. So email address is critical, last name is critical, and this hotel has set the phone number to critical possibly because of the way that they're doing their check-in. So through the phone number, they might invite customers to check-in online.
So we wouldn't standardly have that as an, obligatory field. But for some hotels or if you're in a part hotel that is fully, you know, using no receptionist, you might need that phone number to contact them. And then lastly, obviously, the the the credit card numbers and terms of conditions. And that's that's it.
That's as easy as a booking engine should be. Let's look at some examples of other hotels and what they've done. So let's have a look at this one. So this is a, interesting website.
And, generally, I would recommend against two, confusing websites because right now people are just looking to see if they like your hotel. And if the website is difficult to navigate, you might lose them. But I quite like what they've done. So the book now button is here built in the bottom, but also the book a room.
What I noticed is that the book now button doesn't actually work on this website. So always test your website to make sure that if you have a book now button that it actually works. But I noticed that this one does work. So let's click on that one.
Here, I wanna go back and select some different dates. So let's select the twelfth and to the fourteenth of December, two persons.
So you see the the layout doesn't change but the colors of the hotel change. The images obviously can moderate the room types and descriptions. So let's add this one into the basket. And why I wanted to show this one is because they have a parking, lot for example. And what's nice is that you probably know that you're gonna come with a car and especially if it's an electric car, you wanna make sure that you have a charging point. So you can add on these electric, car park, already at this point. And they have some other, add ons as well.
Let's look at another hotel.
Chapter
Improving guest experience
We have this one, which is, another New Zealand hotel where let's book a stay. And they've done a nice product. And again, they keep you inside their website that you never leave the website.
And here, what I liked on this work user flow is that they have a sauna and that sauna is only really available at specific times. So, for example, it it says, okay. You've selected these dates. So you can select the sauna on these dates.
And then you can just book specific times already because they know that there's a high demand for the sauna. So you can add this on. I've seen for example a hotel in Paris have a karaoke room. Super fun. But you wanna make sure that it's bookable directly now because of the high demand that you're seeing.
Another great example is this hotel.
This is a group of hotels in Belgium, C Hotels. I like that they've embedded video because it's a really good way to quickly experience the destination. And as I press book now, they've also embedded a booking video inside the booking engine. And this is a group of hotels. So here I can select which city I'm looking at. So let's go and have a look at Ostend.
I'll select the dates, and then I'd go next. So what's different in this flow is that we will pull up all of the hotels in the group, and I can show you availability saying, okay. We've got availability in these four hotels, which is the one that you would like to have a look at? And then I can go into that property and go through the details of that particular hotel.
So there's a lot of different optionalities. I think the focus is really on keeping it really simple. Keeping it clean to get through these stages. Don't ask too many questions. Make sure that you have great photos and make sure that all of the products that you offer at the hotel are actually available directly in the booking engine.
When I talk to hoteliers, and I suggest that they should add more product because often when I go and meet the hotel, the first thing I'll do before I get to see them, I'll go to that website, and I'll I'll read up on, you know, what the hotel offers, but also have a look at how they've implemented the booking engine. And often, I find they have one product or they have no products in here or they have twenty products.
And there's definitely too little and too much. So I'd say the perfect number of products to offer are probably four or five because if it's anything more, it would just drive down the experience.
And even if you are a budget hotel, three star budget hotel, you should have products here because people are willing to buy. And we're seeing real results from customers where, we've gone in and we said you should add some products here. They added some and then they instantly start seeing the results from this. So there's a a variety of things that you could do.
So there's definitely the early arrival and the late departure. This is very relevant, especially if you've got, a destination where you see some people are just generally arriving early. So for example, if you have a weekend destination, people are likely to arrive on the Friday morning. So they wanna not store the luggage.
They wanna actually get into the room, especially if you have transatlantic flights. People coming off those flights early morning, they wanna take a shower, and they're willing to pay for that. So make sure that you have those products built in if you have ancillary services. So in in this example, you've got a sauna, but it's it you have to book it.
So add it into the website. Sometimes I see hotels who have taken a basement room and turn that into a great karaoke room. Great idea. Make it bookable.
But also things like bicycle rentals, for example, or city tours you could add in here. Another great example is, customers wanting a gift because they might be in town for a short while. They want a memorabilia from their stay. So rather than making them go to a a shop next door to find these memorabilia, just offer something really local that they can buy.
It will be ready for them in the room so they can just put it in their bags and they don't have to worry about doing that.
And it's often an inspiration challenge that hotels are like, I can't think of anything that's interesting. And this is really where AI comes in. So AI is really good. And I said, I'm a hotel in Amsterdam.
We are four star city center hotel with a high percentage of leisure guests. I'm thinking of adding upsell products to the booking engine, looking for products that can easily store, that don't expire, that give a guest a great memory of the hotel or a person that they can take home. It could also be products that enhance the stay or allow guests to have a better experience in the city. So I haven't yet pressed enter on this, but I'm actually curious to see what it's gonna offer us as an outcome.
So already great. Right? A hotel branded tote bag is really great where you have some nice things like keepsakes from the city.
For example, in the Netherlands stroopwafels is a great welcome gift. So if you're bringing someone, to the destination, it's so nice to come into the room and you have lots of local treats already set set up in the room.
Bicycle rental package is a great thing to add in if you've got those. A canal cruise that they can already prebook the tickets directly on the booking engine.
So and this is how you leverage AI. So if you struggle to come up with ideas, just ask the question because AI is really good at suggesting it. I think the focus really is on making sure that you don't have perishable goods or too many perishable goods because if they don't get sold, then obviously you're gonna get stuck with them. So just buy a small variety of them, or even things that you could still run out and get yourself if they are being purchased. So you don't even have to have any stock, but it's definitely interesting to to think about ways to enhance the stays because all of that is driving the average revenue per customer, and that's a really important thing to achieve.
Chapter
About group bookings
The last use case I wanna talk about is group bookings. We see that, traditional hotels or hotels that do a lot of group bookings like weddings or conferences are having a a dial in a call in tool. So the event organizer will make the booking and say, the individual bookings have to be picked up by the individual guests. So they have to have a way to make the bookings. And often then an email goes out and then you can just go and and email the reservation desk or call in to create these bookings.
And that's really painful because now we have to have humans that accept these bookings. So this is where a booking engine comes in and can do something really great. So I just wanted to show the example, and I think most modern systems can actually do this. So here you see, for example, I created I'm I'm just logged into a Mews demo system, and I created a a group block. So here I've got Matt's party, and I'm staying from the twenty third until the twenty seventh. And I booked ten rooms, and zero have been picked up at this point.
So what I can do is I have this link here that says, okay. Hey. I I wanna have a specific booking engine. So you can actually create a custom booking engine.
So if it's Matt's party, I can create a very nice party themed kind of booking engine. But let's just take the default booking engine, and then I can say link to booking engine. So I can either copy that link or just click on it. And what it does and this is a link you can just forward to the guest directly.
And you see there's a great photo that I've uploaded there. So that could be Matt's photo that you've uploaded into that booking engine. And then I can just select the dates. And you see, it only allows me to book the dates that the group block has.
So I'm gonna book from the twenty third all the way until the twenty seventh, for one adults and just make that booking.
And we've only in that block blocked this particular room type. So that's the one I'm gonna have to book.
And there's only one rate available, which is the special group rate.
Summary. Yes. That's correct. And then at the last page, you can do the checkout. And here you can decide for that booking engine whether you actually want to capture payments or whether the group organizer will actually pay for the room so you can actually hide that payment screen.
But this is a really great way how the booking engine can help you automate some of the the really painful work for a reservation agent in the back office, but also makes it more seamless for your guests to book directly, as a party of the group. So this is the last scenario that I wanted to just show that you can do because now we've talked through individual bookings, group bookings. We've shown a, a multi property booking engine, and then we've also shown a group block booking engine. And as you can see, the the look and feel remains the same, but it has very varying kind of use cases, that it can support.
Chapter
Key takeaways
And that's really what a modern hotel system should do. It should cater to all of the different needs that you have as your hotel in in supporting that.
Thank you for sticking with me through that, and I wanna just just summarize some of the the the highlights. Your website is the most important tool for you to drive the most efficient bookings into your funnel. Make sure that that book now button is always visible in a contrasting color. Make sure that the booking engine does not redirect outside of your website that you keep it those guests within your website. The booking flow should be as frictionless as possible. Customers that experience friction, relief and book on Booking.com or Expedia.
Make sure that your rates are the most competitive and that you have a way to offer a better rate than anyone else because your website is is is directly linked to the hotel. You should have the power to create the best rate possible.
Don't just stick to selling rooms. Go beyond. Offer some other services to drive the average revenue up from customers so that they can already anticipate some of the exciting things that they can do at your at your hotel, and really test it out. Make sure that you can do multiple types of bookings, that you don't just have a single booking flow, but that you can book multiple rooms with different rate types, with different number of people, and that it really supports all the different use cases that you can imagine for your hotel.
Think about translations.
Where are your guests coming from and In which language would you would they like to book? Because if I don't speak your language or English, I still wanna make a booking and I'm I'm able to do that on the OTA website. So whatever they offer, you should be able to offer on your website as well. And really just make sure that you invest into a good booking engine. They don't just take the cheapest or or best available option.
You know, there is a real difference between different types of booking engines and what they can support. And you should not be cramping on the costs for your booking booking engine because this is your most valuable, most efficient channel that you could possibly have as a hotel. I hope you enjoyed this. I obviously went very deep on some of the features, but I think it's important that you understand the nuances in in what you can do with a booking engine on your website and how the the variances have a different impact on conversion and the impact on, hopefully, your bottom line. Thank you.
