Four reasons why online booking works to increase hotel revenue

Mobile phones have become integral to our lives, and we use them to manage many day-to-day processes, from transferring money to booking hotel rooms. In Azerbaijan, regional hotels voiced their concerns about reservations made on the phone. They would accept them without payment, but when guests changed their plans without notifying the hotel, it was they who were left out of pocket. As a result, the hotel staff spent time and resources on a customer who paid nothing. Today, this problem has been solved to benefit both guests and hotels.

Reason 1. Easy Reservations

Making reservations on the hotel website is far easier than using Booking.com. We offer convenient and quality tools to make reservations via the hotel website, which primarily saves the hotel commission costs. In addition, it is a solution that calculates discounts and generates promotional codes for holidays or corporate customers in accordance with the policies of international Online Travel Agencies (OTA).

Today, hotels cannot offer a lower price for a room on their websites than it is listed on OTA, but if there is a need, our solution allows for promo codes. This way, the hotel website adheres to the pricing policy, but guests can get special discounts.

Reason 2. Bank and instant payments integration

It is worth mentioning that we have integrated our tool with a local bank — now. When booking, the client pays immediately, and the hotel receives an advance payment depending on the type of booking (refundable or non-refundable). Hotels can offer bookings without prepayment; however, during the high season, it is more profitable to use the non-refundable rate when the system automatically demands an advance payment to the amount specified by the hotel.

Online booking has become very popular in the last five years, and because of these new booking tools, hoteliers have seen an increase in their revenues.

Reason 3. Booking engine

Before the era of online bookings, direct reservation requests came to hotels in the form of letters and amounted to 5% of daily sales; direct sales via the website now make up more than 50% of the total. Even those guests who previously booked a hotel through a travel agency and bought a whole package from them now book rooms for themselves on the hotel website.

Our solution gives you complete control over social media and advertising platforms, so how well the hotel uses this solution’s tools is important. For example, you can integrate the booking panel with Facebook, allowing the client to click the “Book” button on the hotel’s FB page and access their website. They no longer need to enter data from here because they are synchronized with their Facebook account.

Additional time for registration and confirmation is no longer needed, contributing to an increased number of bookings. Furthermore, the data is secure because it is stored at the PMS level of the hotel.

Reason 4. Chargeback protection and savings

When a guest books a hotel through the OTA channels, their card number is transmitted to the OTA, then to the hotel, which enters the data manually but at the risk of chargebacks. With our solution, this does not happen: the client clicks “book” and then goes to the acquiring page of the bank. They enter their card number with all their information and confirm the payment using a 3D secure code. The transaction remains secure; even bank card details are not transmitted to the hotel. Instead, the hotel receives the booking number and payment, which cannot be used for any chargeback.

Using this method, the hotel can save money on OTA channels because 10 to 25% is spent on commission if the payment comes from OTA. Furthermore, using the booking engine allows the hotel to either keep this commission or give the guest a discount, gaining his loyalty and increasing the probability of good feedback. This model works well in Azerbaijan, where domestic tourism is well-developed, and booking directly on the hotel website is much more convenient for locals. The main advantages are that it is profitable, and guests benefit from the discount they get and pay less than they would if they made an OTA booking.

Online booking has made life easier for both the hotels and the guests. In addition, this tool can be easily integrated into Opera Cloud, OPERA PMS, and Suite8 PMS, helping to increase hotel revenues.

Orkhan Isayev

HRS Business Development Director