It’s undeniable that OTA channels are bringing the most bookings for hotels, a very good channel to promote your hotel brand. However, it comes with commissions. In order to maximize your revenue and profit, hoteliers need to boost direct bookings from their own channels like website, phone call, or email.

Direct booking is a booking that the guests make directly with the hotel without via distribution channels. There are several direct booking methods, such as hotel social media page, phone calls, email, or the most popular way: website.

What needs to be done in order to increase these direct bookings?

1. Website optimization

First, put yourself in the customer’s shoes, think like a customer to understand what makes them make a booking decision. Visitors to your website must be satisfied with the questions and problems they are having before booking. You need to make sure your website provides the most accurate and attractive information about rooms and the hotel. And always update this information continuously to gain customer trust.

Optimizing the design, layout, placement of buttons and images on the web is also very important. Your website should not only be beautiful and eye-catching to make a great first impression, but it must also have a clear smart layout to provide the best possible user experience.

The next step, make sure your website can be displayed on all devices, especially mobile. Also, pay attention to Google search. Make sure your website shows up on Google search results.

2. A seamless booking process

How guests can make a direct booking via your website? It is thanks to the booking engine integrated into your website. But has your system’s booking process been optimized? Learn from OTA sites, the booking process on the website should be simple and fast from the moment guests search for a room down to payment.

Also, make sure your booking system supports multiple payment methods, as well as the ability to integrate with many other management systems like PMS.

3. Special offers

Due to rate parity, make sure your room rate is consistent across channels. Before making a booking decision, guests will cross-check their information from different sources, compare prices. People tend to think that the price of OTA is the best price. You need to prove this is no longer true: booking on a guest website can still have the same good price as an OTA channel, and also enjoy other preferential policies.

So to add value to the website booking channel, you can give guests some extra services or have a better refund policy. In addition, after-sales and loyalty programs are also a good way to keep guests coming back and booking directly with you.

4. Promote your brand

Use social media to promote your hotel brand. Increase brand presence on media channels to attract customers to the hotel’s website channel. An easy way to do so is to share travel photos, trending places, festivals on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok.