In the first part of our guide, delved into three essential steps to enhance your independent hotel’s online reputation, ultimately driving an upsurge in direct bookings. Part two unraveled cost-effective marketing techniques, highlighting the role of personalization and the seamless integration of AI-driven tools like Directful into your hotel marketing strategies. Now, in Part 3, discover the next powerful strategy for driving direct bookings and revenue growth.
Turn Your Past Guests into a Valuable Source of Direct Bookings
Among the countless strategies in a hotelier’s playbook, there is one often underappreciated and underutilized asset: past guests. These individuals have already experienced the charm and hospitality of your establishment, making them a valuable resource for driving future bookings.
Yet, the reality is that OTAs make everything possible to keep guests loyal to their platform. They limit access to the guest data, making it difficult for hotels to establish a comprehensive database of guests and effectively segment their customer base.
While OTAs are instrumental for acquiring new guests, hotels must take proactive steps to regain control of their guest relationships. After all, hotels have already invested significantly in acquiring these guests. The key lies in equipping your hotel with the right tools to maintain a comprehensive guest database to re-engage with past guests effectively.
By harnessing the power of technology and data-driven strategies, hotels can embark on a journey to reconnect with their previous guests, nurture these valuable relationships, and encourage repeat direct bookings.
Step #6: Maintaining a Comprehensive Guest Database
We all know that OTAs typically hide guests’ genuine email addresses, physical addresses, and phone numbers, making it challenging for hotels to establish direct communication channels for future bookings.
While hotel staff are undeniably busy managing various aspects of the guest experience, there is one golden opportunity that should never be missed-collecting guest information upon arrival. Furthermore, it’s crucial for hotels to have a contingency plan to obtain missing information when guests fail to provide complete details.
But how can hotels overcome this longstanding challenge of building comprehensive guest profiles?
Thankfully, modern technologies, such as AI and machine learning algorithms, offer a solution to the obstacles posed by limited access to guest data. For example, Directful’s AI capabilities enable a 360-degree view of a guest’s profile, leveraging fragmented data from a multitude of sources. It’s a complex task, but it’s we successfully accomplish by utilizing data collected from existing PMS information, third-party sources, and our proprietary data.
Now, consider the remarkable results that independent hotels can achieve by harnessing the right hotel technologies: if you currently have X amount of marketable guest data, envision that figure increasing by 40%. The potential revenue generated from this expanded dataset is substantial, and it often requires minimal effort on the part of the hotel itself, thanks to the power of automation.
By maximizing your data assets and employing the right tools, you can not only enhance the guest experience but also elevate your hotel’s profitability through increased direct bookings.
Step #7: Re-engage Past Guests Even If Your Hotel Doesn’t Have a Loyalty Program
While branded hotels frequently benefit from established loyalty programs, independent hotels can still build repeat business by re-engaging with past guests. It’s essential to maintain a database of past guests and reach out to them with special offers, promotions, and personalized incentives to return to your property, even if your hotel doesn’t have a formal loyalty program.
Past guests have already experienced your hotel’s hospitality and are more likely to choose your property for their next stay if you stay on their radar. Re-engaging with them keeps your hotel top-of-mind and can lead to increased direct bookings.
By leveraging AI automated hospitality technologies such as Directful, you can re-engage past guests with personalized communication, targeted promotions, and automated reminders to book a repeat stay.
Moreover, Directful makes the re-engagement process easier by providing a simple drag-and-drop campaign builder that allows hotels to use pre-built templates designed by marketing experts and based on best practices. Instead of starting from scratch, hotels can use these templates as a starting point and then customize them to fit their specific needs.
With customization options, hotels can add their own branding, messaging, and content to the campaigns. This personal touch ensures that every communication resonates with your distinct brand identity, making it more compelling for past guests to select your hotel for their next stay.
To learn more how to reach back to up to 80% of your past guests without spending hours of your valuable time, check out our detailed article on the topic here: how-to-reach-back-past-guests-easily
Step #8: Compete with OTA Rates through Direct Booking Incentives
In the ongoing battle between OTAs and hotels, there’s a critical issue at play: price parity agreements. These agreements often make it tough for independent hotels to compete with OTAs when it comes to rates-a crucial factor for guests when they’re deciding where to book.
According to rate parity clauses, hotels are typically prohibited from offering lower rates on their websites than on OTAs.
While hotels cannot offer a lower rate than what’s displayed on OTAs publicly, they can still offer targeted discounts to specific guest segments, to avoid violating OTA rate parity clauses. Your investment in these guests can yield significant returns when you successfully transition them from OTA bookings to direct bookings.
To further compete with OTA rates, hotels can implement direct-to-guest marketing that offers personalized benefits to guests who book directly through the hotel’s website. These incentives can include special discounts, complimentary upgrades, or additional perks that aren’t available through OTAs. By offering unique benefits for direct bookings, you create a compelling reason for guests to bypass OTAs and book directly with your hotel.
Directful’s platform provides an automated solution to segment OTA guests and re-engage with them by offering exclusive incentives. Moreover, by analyzing guest data and identifying past OTA bookers, Directful’s AI can pinpoint guests who are likely to book directly with the hotel in the future, increasing conversion rates and the number of repeat bookings.
If you want to explore a real-world case study on how a luxury resort in Missouri converted 160+ OTA guest to direct bookers, yielding $76,900 in revenue, check out our detailed case study here: luxury-resort-ota-guest-to-direct-revenue-boost/
Conclusion
By focusing on online visibility, utilizing modern technology, implementing personalization, offering direct booking incentives, and re-engaging past guests, independent hotels can thrive and increase their direct bookings.
These strategies empower them to compete effectively with OTAs and branded properties, enhancing their online presence, building guest trust, and driving revenue. Leveraging tools like Directful, independent hotels can streamline these processes, making the journey to success in the competitive hospitality industry a reality.
