Who would like to pay high commissions to Online Travel Agents
(OTAs), if the Hotel guests make direct bookings often? Of course, companies operating
in the hospitality sector have similar problems.
If a hotel is associated with endless travel
companies/agents, they require paying commissions for all of them for the
traffic they receive, every time through them. Hotels can find a way around
travel agents and make guests directly book with them. Here, is how.
The guests need to have reasons to book direct with the hotel.
Hotels can attract customers, by offering incentives and special packages to
them.
Thanks to technology, a majority of people stick to dotcoms (most
often) for this and that. To entice people, hotels can extend the Free Wi-Fi offer
(in the lobby and other regions of the hotel) to those who chose to book rooms
directly, without going through travel agents or companies. This would work
most of the times. However, as every customer is different and so be his/her
needs and wants, the hotels need to test and try different offers and
incentives to see what is working for their business, the most.
Regarding the offerings (other than Free Wi-Fi), hotels can
even extend free food/beverage offers to guests who do direct hotel bookings. In
Bed and Breakfast hotels, the package includes food (in general), so free
breakfast may not be a big deal for the guest. However, for hotels falling in
other categories, they of course can extend a Free Breakfast offer to their
hotel guests.
A bottle of Champagne/Wine Free or Chocolates (if the kids
involved) would bring smile on the face of many. Hotels can think of many novel
ideas to make their guests feel special, whenever they book rooms directly with
the hotel. Moreover, hotels can even offer free event tickets, which some may
be interested upon.
Everybody likes money saving packages. These attractive offers
and incentives would of course give reasons to the guests to think of visiting
the hotel, all the time they are on a vacation or a business tour in that
region or locality.
By extending the offers and incentives to their ‘loyal’ customer
base, the possibilities are even that those customers would post positive
reviews about the hotel, online. This way, the hoteliers would get more direct
inquiries and hotel bookings from other (new) guests as well.
