Is your hotel booking engine funnel choked?

Hotels today spend considerable resources and time towards driving traffic to their hotel brand website. Notwithstanding these efforts, very few hotels are able to understand why this traffic does not lead to more booking conversions. There could be a myriad of reasons! But today, we help you understand if your hotel booking engine is choked.

What is a hotel booking engine funnel?

The moment the guest lands on your booking engine, he enters the hotel booking engine funnel. The funnel is the various steps that convert the guest from a looker to a booker. This includes searching for rooms for a particular timeline and occupancy, choosing the best offering, including add-ons and entering guest information.

Hotels today spend considerable resources and time towards driving traffic to their hotel brand website. Notwithstanding these efforts, very few hotels are able to understand why this traffic does not lead to more booking conversions. There could be a myriad of reasons! But today, we help you understand if your hotel booking engine is choked.

What is a hotel booking engine funnel?

The moment the guest lands on your booking engine, he enters the hotel booking engine funnel. The funnel is the various steps that convert the guest from a looker to a booker. This includes searching for rooms for a particular timeline and occupancy, choosing the best offering, including add-ons and entering guest information.

Visitor journey within the booking engine funnel

This is the typical journey of visitors on a hotel website:

They land on the hotel brand website via Google’s Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) after entering a search phrase.
The hotel’s website content engages them to look at rooms, location and other amenities.
They then look at room pricing on the booking engine.
Finally, they confirm their reservation.

Conversion funnel optimisation for hotels

We believe that most hoteliers today should use a booking engine that provides data on the number of visitors, searches and failed searches. Simplotel’s Booking Engine empowers hotels with this data. And, from our research, we have found that the following reasons choke up the booking engine funnel:

Conversion funnel optimisation for hotels

We believe that most hoteliers today should use a booking engine that provides data on the number of visitors, searches and failed searches. Simplotel’s Booking Engine empowers hotels with this data. And, from our research, we have found that the following reasons choke up the booking engine funnel:

Inventory displaying ‘Sold Out’ due to configuration issues on the booking engine.
Your hotel rate plans are loaded only for a particular period. Quite often, hotels set up rates for a certain period. One may not realise that customers have begun searching for stay dates beyond this duration — for which the rates plans are not loaded. As a result, hotels miss out on this demand.
You have configured only double or triple occupancy rates, but your rooms can accommodate more. You may not realise that this is costing you bookings.

Simplotel's Hotel Booking Engine advantage

Simplotel Booking Engine’s analytics offer complete visibility into the booking engine funnel — how many people are visiting your booking engine, how many are searching and how many of those searches failed (Read our case study on how Royal Orchid & Regenta Hotels did 9% of its total occupancy through Simplotel Booking Engine). For instance, a failed search might occur when the inquiry does not provide a result, as inventory or rate plans are missing. Simplotel delivers a daily alert via email that helps you identify lost opportunities of the previous day, helping you to act on them. We also provide insightful analytics on the length of stay and advance purchase patterns, which we shall cover in an upcoming blog.