The AR booking engine is a cloud based reservation system that links directly to your business website. Following that, it enables your guests to book their stay with you directly from the hotel’s website.
The best thing about this booking engine is that the guests can use it even from their mobile phones or tablets. As a benefit, you get commission-free bookings, which can increase your profit rate from each booking.
Commissions are charged by online travel agents (OTAs) when you list your rooms and services over their platform. It truly helps the small hotels get more customers but comes at a certain cost, forcing you to keep your room rates high. It becomes important to maintain a profit margin with each booking with OTAs.
As a result, your pricing strategy will fail. Therefore, it is important that you consider installing the perfect booking engine with your website. And it will help you take up direct bookings, where you can pitch your strategic offers to customers without hampering your profit due to commissions.
Get clarity on this concept by referring to the ways AR booking engine can help your small hotel business.
Working Process of an Online Booking Engine
The online booking engine will first link to your hotel website and create a cloud based reservation system. And then, when the travelers make the reservations through the website, the data will be passed onto the property management system (PMS) and channel Manager.
At the PMS, you can monitor and manage the bookings from your end, whereas the channel manager will update your inventory for every booking.
The working of a booking engine is not just limited to your website, but a direct link can also be added to the Facebook profile. You can add a dedicated tab, ‘Book Now’, and sync it with the booking engine redirection link.
Hence, it means that even though your potential customers do not visit your official website, they can still book their rooms directly from your system.
The AR booking engine will display the room availability and rates constantly as per the updates over the channel manager or PMS. The guests will then get the flexibility of choosing their date and time for making the reservations.
In addition to that, you can seek automation of tasks, such as sending confirmation and successful payment emails to the customers.
7 Ways AR Booking Engine Helps Small Hotels
With the in-depth idea of how an online booking engine works, it is time you should focus on how AR booking engine can help you. These are as follows:
1. Set up the Payment Policies
With the AR booking engine, you can set up several payment policies to add more flexibility for customers who intend to book their stay with you.
For instance, you can change the amount of advance a customer has to pay to confirm their reservation, giving them the ‘Pay at Hotel’ option and adding ‘Full Conditional Refund’ options.
2. Push Notifications on Customer Abandonment
The AR booking engine enables push notifications for you to get notified every time a customer abandons your website without confirming their booking.
It is a very important feature that will help you take follow-ups and remarketing measures for the customers who left their booking incomplete.
3. Put up Special Deals and Promotions
With a direct booking engine, you will cut through all the clutters of OTAs and offer some undeniable deals and promotions to customers.
This will encourage them to book their stay with you directly through your website.
You can continue listing your rooms and services over the OTAs, but your focus should always be on getting more direct bookings.
4. Help in Taxation Aspects
The AR booking Engine takes care of your direct booking ratio and lets you make custom adjustments to your tax rates.
With this initiative, you can be sure of the fact that all of your invoices are compliant with the latest tax laws as per the respective government.
5. Get Reports for In-Depth Evaluation
With the help of this proficient cloud-based reservation system, you will get a complete view of the entire booking calendar.
In addition to that, the functionality of the web booking engine in collaboration with the channel manager will help you get complete check-in and check-out information for your hotel.
6. User-Friendly Dashboard
The dashboard at AR booking engine will give you centralised information on every minute booking detail. The entire dashboard is easy to use and learn. You don’t have to navigate through complex controls to keep track of your direct booking insights.
7. Confirmation Email is Sent to Guests
The booking engine can be programmed in a way to greet the guests through SMS and email. You can set your booking engine to send an automated confirmation email upon completion of your customer’s booking.
The new customers will get an evidential email as well as a greeting for completion of their booking.
What More Does the AxisRooms’ Booking Engine Have to Offer?
Apart from the core features of simplifying the booking experience for your potential guests, AxisRooms offers a user-friendly dashboard. This dashboard is pretty easy to use, with all the information in one place.
You don’t have to manage multiple log-in credentials for accessing data of different types. With AxisRooms’ booking engine, all you need is just one log-in to access every bit of information there.
The most appreciated feature of our booking engine is its cloud based reservation system. Hence, this means that you can access it from anywhere and at any time.
This booking engine is not just meant for online and direct bookings but also for you to make the manual edits. If you have some offline booking for which you want to block the slots, you can do it right from the dashboard.
And if you also use AxisRoom’s channel manager, this booking can be updated directly to the hotel’s inventory. So, you can either get our channel manager as well or link the booking engine to your existing one.
Let AxisRooms Be a Part of Growth in Your Hotel Business!
AxisRooms’ booking engine is preferred by the top brands across the globe. Some of them are Hotel Willow Banks, Sharavi Beach Villas & Spa, Golden Tulip, The Grand Kandyan, and many more.
Check out our website to get a demo of our booking engine in action. You need to fill in the form to give out your details so that we can reach you. Following the demo, we will also provide transparent pricing for our services.
Once you get sight of the functionality demo of AxisRooms’ booking engine, you can eventually understand the overall efficacy of it for your business.
For more information, check out the website or get in touch with our consultants right away!