The festive season is a busy time for hotels, with an increasing number of travellers looking to book vacations to enjoy their holiday. Like your competitors, we know that you, too, are keen on attracting more guests to fill in more and more rooms during the festive season rush. And why not? Who doesn't like making the most out of peak season business? This is where selling more rooms online and, most notably, at the correct rates is critical to success.
In this blog, we will look at how three hospitality technology solutions - Channel Manager, Web Booking Engine, and Rate Shopper- can help you achieve your desired result - enhanced occupancy and revenue.
Channel Manager
Today, most travellers are booking their accommodations via online platforms, including OTA, metasearch engines, etc. It has led to every hotel around you, small and big - all of them selling their rooms online. That's why you also have to sell via online channels - on average, on 4-5 OTAs. Now, you can't manually manage the process of updating rates and inventories when selling your rooms on multiple online sales channels.
Let's see how a channel manager does the job for you.
- Allows you to manage multiple online booking/sales channels from a single platform, ensuring that room availability and rates are consistent across all channels. It saves time and reduces the risk of overbooking and loss of business opportunities.
- Improves your online visibility, thus increasing the chances of travellers booking your property on OTAs.
- Offers channel-wise performance reports and lets you know which channel brings you more business.
- Allows you to set up promotions and instantly pushes them on all supported OTAs, helping you save time and avoid rate disparity issues.
Web Booking Engine
After indirect bookings via OTAs, let's look at ways to generate incremental direct bookings. From a revenue point of view, this is very critical as you don't have to worry about paying booking commission costs. A web booking engine turns your website and social media pages into potential sources for more direct bookings.
This is how a booking engine can help you.
- Allows guests to book directly with you 24/7.
- Lets you set up your booking policy, advance payment, etc., to minimise losses that may arise due to cancellations and no-shows.
- Automatically sends booking confirmation emails to guests.
- It saves man-hours as the solution takes care of the end-to-end process - from booking to accepting payment.
- Lets you set up last-minute deals and discounts around extended stays, etc., for more bookings.
Rate Shopper
Only selling more rooms online is not enough. You have to sell at competitive rates to generate more revenue. But for this, you need to know at what rate your competitors are selling, right? No worries, the rate shopper tool will take care of it.
- Provides real-time rate comparison of your competitors and allows you to determine the best pricing strategy.
- Lets you sell at the best rates to boost occupancy and revenue.
- Helps you keep an eye on competitors' online rankings and review scores.
- Takes out guesswork and saves time
The combined power of Channel Manager, Web Booking Engine, and Rate Shopper
Just imagine when you manually update multiple OTAs with rates and inventory, keep track of direct bookings, and monitor competition rates. You will face many challenges, including operational errors, overbookings, wrong pricing, and many more, negatively impacting your capability to get more out of festive season business.
If you look closely at all three solutions, you will see that they are critical to your success during the festive season demand. While channel manager and booking engine aid with more online sales, rate shopper lets you sell at competitive rates to make more RevPAR. Another vital point is automation, which saves about 90% of your time daily so that you can attend to guest needs.
If you want to grab your share of business this festive season, adopt our bundle package - Channel Manager, Web Booking Engine, and Rate Shopper.
Wait, we are not done yet. Let's give you some festive vibes.