Webinar with OTA Insight and Travel Tripper. Video available at https://youtu.be/W7Zv07XO7Ys
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The increasing complexity of the online distribution landscape and the ever-changing behavior of consumers presents new challenges to hotel revenue managers every year, especially for independent hotels. How do you find the optimal channel mix for your hotel? How can you ensure that you're making the most out of each channel? And what data should be driving your decision making?
In this webinar, experts from Travel Tripper and OTA Insight will do a deep dive into optimizing the independent hotel’s distribution mix, including important strategies for managing OTA, metasearch, and direct booking channels. You’ll learn about:
- Driving bookings more effectively through price monitoring and management
- Using smarter analytics to optimize channel performance across OTAs and metasearch sites
- Optimizing your website to compete effectively for direct bookings
- Developing geographic marketing strategies
- The importance of content parity as well as rate parity
- Being competitive on metasearch and deciding on budgets, channels, and markets for your property
- Developing the right attribution models to measure success
2. Speakers
GINO ENGELS
Co-Founder & Chief
Commercial Officer
JOAN LEE
Vice President of
Operations
KERST LEHMANN
Digital Marketing
Specialist
3. Agenda
PART 1
Navigating the changing online distribution landscape
PART 2
Optimizing your web direct channel
PART 3
Maximizing on metasearch
PART 4
Audience Q&A
3
4. Audience Poll
As a hotelier, what are your biggest challenge(s) right now when it comes to online distribution?
A. The lack of control of my hotel’s rates and availability across all the online channels
B. Too much business going to high-commission channels instead of direct channels
C. Understanding how to use metasearch for my own benefit
D. Finding the right vendors to work with on analytics and digital marketing
E. Other or none of the above
4
6. Do you know your cost of online customer acquisition?
H It’s no longer just about simply
activating the different online
channels to fill rooms
7. Control over online inventory, it’s not so simple
OTA DIRECTMETA
• No. of different channels
• Customer mix
• Competitive
price/package/offering
vs all channels
• How to drive traffic
effectively?
8. OTAs and metasearch are a core part of
hotel room shopping
Phocus Forward The Year Ahead in Digital Travel, Phocuswright 2017
10. Changing face of the online travel
Phocus Forward The Year Ahead in Digital Travel, Phocuswright 2017
11. China and India are key growth markets
in leisure travel
WTTC, 2016
12. Understand and manage performance of
your online channel levers
How many room nights does
each channel normally
generate?
LOS
Which day of week are your
channels driving business in?
Day of Week
Which regions are your
channels driving business
from?
Room Types
What sort of lead time are
your channels driving for
your room bookings?
Country
How far in advance do guests
book and via which channel?
Lead Times
13. Total Property 200 rooms
Rooms Available 5 rooms
Leadtime 2 days
Choose the channel strategy that
works for you
15. Use technology to spot and manage
discrepancies on OTAs and Meta sites
16. Who is selling your rate?
Determine the wholesaler undercutting you
17. 1. Be aware of the current market trends
and take advantage
2. Understand your online channels and
what type of business they generate
3. Gain control over your online rates and
inventory
Key takeaways
18. Optimizing your
web direct channel
18
Increasing contribution from your
direct channel to increase your
bottom line
19. Increasing your direct channel
contribution
Hotels know that a good distribution mix is
key to increasing the bottom line.
● High OTA costs
● Cheapest channel is your direct channel
● Benefits
○ Own your guests
○ Customer engagement (pre and post stay)
○ Marketing for future stays
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20. Optimize your website
Your website is a great place to educate
your customers to book direct.
● Having the best deal on website
● Price checkers
● Mobile optimized website and
booking engine
● Internationalization
● Geotargeting Strategies
● Content Parity
● Brand Term PPC Campaigns
21. Your website should have the best deal out there!
A traveler is doing their research across many sites before they book your
hotel. Give them a reason to book on your website.
Incentivize travelers to book direct: Free WiFi, Free Upgrade
48%of bookers
most likely to book direct
if offered a room upgrade
Source: softwareadvice.com
22. Your website should have the best deal out there!
Draw attention by a pop up or slide in.
It’s a great way to show the benefits of booking direct.
23. Your website should have the best deal out there!
Perks and rewards are a great way to entice travelers to book direct.
Stay Wanderful
GuestBook
24. Your website should have the best deal out there!
Email signups aren’t as intrusive as website popups and are usually found at the footer of
websites. Benefits of email signups:
● Acquire email addresses for future marketing
● Sell the best rate to closed user group through email
● Sell member rates on your booking engine to closed user group
25.
26. Price Checkers
Price checkers give travelers confidence that your website does in fact have the best deal.
● Decrease the chances of the traveler leaving your website to shop other channels
● Travel Tripper’s Rate Match goes a step further by automating the best rate guarantee
on the hotel’s own website
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27. Mobile Optimized Website and Booking Engine
Mobile website traffic and conversions are growing at exponential
rates.
According to Google, 31% of leisure travelers have booked on a
smartphone, 53% of business travelers have booked on a
smartphone.
28. Mobile Optimized Booking Engine
Mobile booking engines should
have these characteristics:
● Large imagery that is clickable
● Clear and prominent call to
action buttons
● Use screen space wisely—less
is more!
● Easy to add billing info
29. Internationalization
We see some markets can have 50% or more of their traffic from international countries.
Increase website conversion rates by supporting other languages and currencies.
Tips:
1. Find the top 3-6 countries.
2. Ensure the experience is seamless from your website to booking engine.
3. International marketing promotions.
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30. Geo-targeting Strategies
Pricing your direct channel geographically is a great way to
sell the lowest rate on your website.
● This discount is still lower than paying high OTA
commissions
● Bookings from international countries have longer
lead times and longer lengths of stay
● Offer these geo-targeted promotions to geographies
with the greatest opportunity
31. Geo-targeting Strategies
Types of offers:
● Length of stay discounts
● Include value-add such as breakfast, wifi, free upgrade
Don’t forget to promote!
● Geo-targeted offers are great for PPC campaigns
● Target international visitors with the right message
through a PPC ad to ensure you get the visitor to your
website and convert
● Seamless user experience
32. Content Parity
Your website should represent your hotel in
the the best light compared to OTAs, Metas,
and any other distribution channel.
Things to look out for:
● Property and Room images
● Room type names
● Cancellation policies
● Amenities
33. Content Parity
OTAs like to highlight certain
attributes such as Free WiFi,
Free Breakfast, Free Parking,
Free Cancellation prominently.
If your website doesn’t highlight
the same attributes, then your
hotel looks like a better value if
booking on an OTA.
OTA LISTING
WEBSITE LISTING
34. Brand-term Search Engine Marketing
What is your hotel name worth? It’s worth
enough that other sites are bidding on it!
● OTAs
● FITs and Wholesalers
● MetaSearch sites like Kayak and
Trivago
● Review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp
36. Brand Term PPC Marketing
Protect your brand terms! Merchant agreements should have a clause.
Your cost per click gets more expensive if more players are bidding on your brand
keywords.
Have PPC campaigns for your brand terms to take the top spots on search engines to
optimize the amount of traffic you are getting to your website.
38. Metasearch vs OTAs
METASEARCH
At its core, metasearch
is a rate-shopping tool
compiling room rates
from multiple booking
websites, including
OTAs, into one search
engine platform.
Examples: Google Hotel
Ads, TripAdvisor, Kayak
OTAs
OTAs, or Online Travel
Agents, are bookings
sites for a multitude of
products, including
flights, car rentals and
hotel reservations.
Examples: Booking.com,
Expedia.com,
Reservations.com
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39. Metasearch
Metasearch platforms are data aggregators of other search engines and offer a collection of
real-time inventory and room rates at preferred stay dates.
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44. Metasearch Integration
Find the right
integration partner
Choose
Channels
Establish BE
Connectivity
Choosing the right partner is
crucial for success.
The selection of channels
is determined by several
factors, such as
competition, budget and
target audience.
Sufficient integration with
the BE enables seamless
control of rates and
inventory.
Monitor
Performance
Set goals and monitor
results closely to evaluate
the effectiveness of
metasearch.
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45. METASEARCH DOs and DON’Ts
● Don’t consider metasearch as a LUXURY compared
to other DM channels.
● Stop focusing too much on your COMPETITION.
● Don’t FALL BEHIND your partners or competitors.
○ No metasearch integration = no fair
marketplace.
● Don’t base FUTURE STRATEGIES off of your first
month’s performance.
● Stop RELYING PRIMARILY on OTAs rather than
having more control over your own spend.
● Know your TARGET AUDIENCE.
● Choose the right CHANNELS for your objectives.
● Use a BUDGET that’s right for you.
● Guarantee RATE PARITY or better rates at all
times.
● Know what’s in your OTA CONTRACT.
● Make sure you provide GREAT SERVICE for great
review.
● Respond to ALL REVIEWS.
● Keep TESTING!
47. Thank You!
Please send all follow up questions to
marketing@traveltripper.com.
The webinar video and presentation
will be made available to all registrants
within 1 day.