You have been in the hospitality industry for more than 2 decades. The customer journey while booking a hotel is extremely clear in your head. What is it that you do not know about customer journeys while a guest is looking while booking a hotel? At the outset, this looks like a pretty simple question to answer. Having said that how a customer books a hotel has changed significantly post-digitization.

Let’s consider this question – How does the customer journey while booking a hotel look like?

To answer the question in the most comprehensive way, let’s break it down.

If we break down this simple question we have 3 important keywords

Customer
Book
Hotel

Let us dig deeper into each one of these points.

1. Customer

• Business Travellers
• Leisure Travellers

Historically speaking, you know the customer segment your hotel caters to. Leisure travellers & business travellers make up the 2 main segments. It may be a 60:40 ratio or 30:70 or 10:70. Whatever the ratio, it is extremely important to keep this historical trend in mind. Identify your core customer segment which brings in the most amount of revenue. To increase revenue communicate with your customer through digital tools & platforms.

2. Book

A reservation can come in 2 ways.

• Directly from the property (Either through your website or calling up the property directly or a walk-in)
• Through a travel agency (Be it online or offline sources)

Analyze historical data to gain insights into how a customer is booking your property.

3. Hotel

Identify the unique selling points for your property. Positioning the hotel where a customer considers staying at your property when they are at the destination. From pricing to the location to reviews. Everything comes in harmony to position your hotel in a customer’s mind. By having a swanky-looking website you may end up positioning your property higher than your competition. Positioning is something that is completely in your control. Thorough research & working on this can help your hotel surface its visibility manifold.

As a business owner, your ultimate objective is to increase profit from the hotel business.
Doing it is much harder than talking about it.

Before increasing your direct bookings, you may have to analytically consider the type of customer base your hotel is servicing.

1. Business Travellers – They may end up coming to your property a few times a year
2. Leisure Travellers – They may visit your property once every year or once every 5-10 years.

The hotel can see an increase in revenue by executing any of the below action items.

1. Increase Direct Bookings thus reducing the commissions given to OTA.
2. Revenue Optimization through increased ADR, increased occupancy rate, selling meeting & events spaces along with F&B services.
3. Optimizing Operational Expenditures.

Understanding the customer journey while booking a hotel can help identify spots where your property can enhance its digital presence. Using digital channels, depending on the type of customer your hotel caters to, communicate how their life becomes easier when they stay at your property. If your hotel caters to leisure travellers, you might want to showcase attractions one can go nearby your property. If on the other hand business traveller contributes significantly towards your revenue communicate through relevant content catering to a business traveller’s needs.

Developing creative sales & marketing techniques can help increase the revenue of your property. Understanding the customer journey while booking a hotel is critical to set yourself up for success.

Business Traveller

• The first time a business traveller comes to your property may happen through a direct channel or through an OTA. You can optimize your digital presence. When they search for a property your website and/or its digital assets may show up. If the customer likes what they see they may do a direct booking. Yet there’s also that chance where the business traveller has reward points stacked up in an OTA platform. To utilize the reward points the business traveller books their reservation through the OTA platform itself. So the first acquisition of the traveller to your property is something which is not always in your control.
• Now comes your creative way to acquire the customer for repeat business. Make the traveller understand the benefits when he/she books directly. If the customer finds value in booking directly, he/she would do so when making a repeat booking. Needless to say, for someone to become a repeat customer, their first experience at your property has to be top-notch. The first stay of the traveller has to be made superb for him/her to make repeat purchases in the future. There can be various mechanisms to establish value for the business traveller to make repeat purchases. Below are a few such examples

1. Next time when you come down for business get done with that & enjoy a beer after work. Don’t worry, we won’t charge you for the beer. Chill & relax.
2. Next time when you arrive for business let us arrange a pick-up & drop-off service from the nearest airport.
3. We understand how important the first meal of the day is when you are coming for a business trip. Next time when you stay with us, breakfast is on us. Our breakfast includes these items to supercharge you for a productive business day.
4. We noticed you had half a day after you finished your business dealings. Next time when you stay with us let us know beforehand. We can arrange a great deal for you at the most famous restaurant/café in the vicinity.
5. Last time you stayed with us, we noticed you had half a day after you finished your business dealings. Next time when you stay with us let us know beforehand. We can arrange a short experience for you that you can enjoy nearby our property.
6. Next time the customer stays at your property offer them a flat %OFF.
   

Leisure Traveller

Leisure travellers are a completely different customer segment. They may visit your property once every year or once every 5-10 years, depending on your property’s location. The thought process of acquiring customers for your leisure travel business is significantly different from acquiring business travellers.

Firstly one has to understand how the purchase decision is made when finalizing a leisure destination. Once the destination is finalized comes the question of selecting the properties to stay. Needless to say, a lot more thought is put into the selection of leisure destinations when compared with business travel. Also, the number of stakeholders involved in making a choice for a leisure destination is significantly more. The kids, wife along with the man of the family all have to agree upon a preferred destination. Then the property is selected & bookings made.

Hopefully, at the outset itself, it can be understood the long & complex a customer journey is while booking a hotel.

As a property owner/decision maker this is where your task of helping a probable customer navigate this journey comes in. Once a leisure customer books through an OTA, making him/her a repeat customer becomes extremely difficult. Simply because he/she may not even visit the destination again in the next 5 years. Thus it is quintessentially important to get a direct booking in the first purchase itself.

Let’s look at various strategies to generate direct bookings for your hotel.

• Magazine – an online travel platform sharing experiences of past travellers. Answering questions of probable travellers. Sharing insights about the destination & much more. Here’s a good example of an online magazine maintained by a hotel. It is commonly known as a blog.
• Social Media – Outreach channels to showcase the various pain points a traveller may experience while finalizing the destination & hotel of their preference.
• Influencer Marketing – Strategic outreach with micro-influencers who help shape the outlook of a destination & property among their audience.
• Review Marketing – Making proper use of the good reviews that have been generated to create content to market the reviews.
• Video Marketing – An all-encompassing video strategy to tell stories about the past, present & future travellers who are coming to your destination and choosing to stay at your hotel. A video tour of your property is a must-have.

You may want to check out this detailed comprehensive guide on increasing direct bookings. The above are just a few examples & strategies. Identify your business travellers’ pain points. You/your marketing partner can design ways in which first-time & repeat purchases can be presented to increase direct bookings.

The question is on which digital channels would you place all these offers?

There is no one correct answer to this. One has to study your hotel’s analytical data to understand which would be the right place to position these offers. For e.g. a tab on your website highlights the benefits a business traveller gets if they stay at the property. Have a POP-UP activated if a user navigates to this page. Communicate the various offers that a business traveller can avail of if they choose to stay at your property. This can help a probable customer choose your property for their next business trip. Likewise, you may analyse & find your customers are extremely active on LinkedIn. Having a LinkedIn page where you end up doing organic & paid content can raise awareness among your customer base.

If you look have been following till now, you may have understood how complex the digital ecosystem is. Acquiring a customer through digital channels can be done creatively, but it requires meticulous research & constant monitoring along with optimization.

To end this section I’d like to present one more idea for acquiring first-time & repeat customers for your property. This idea is to do with reviews.

Suppose you give a superlative experience to a customer when they stay at your property. Now you may urge the customer to put in a good review on TripAdvisor & Google Reviews. The customer gives a 5-star review. Down the line when this guest arrives at your property give an extra something to the guest. If a known associate of the guest takes their reference give offers to both the new traveller & the old guest. Use a UNIQUE_GUEST_CODE. This way you may end up nudging your purchaser to spread the word about your property among his/her network. Here both your present guest & their associates stand a chance to gain discounts/offers when they book their stay directly.

The customer journey to booking a hotel is extremely complex with multiple touchpoints. The better you know your customer the better experiences can be developed for them. That in turn can make you understand the customer’s pain points. Start addressing the pain points on the various digital platforms available to you as a hotel owner.

Creating seamless digital experiences is hard. Not impossible. A methodical approach can help you understand what strategies should be implemented to increase your direct revenue.

Liked what you read on customer journey while booking a hotel? I work as a consultant in a US based marktech firm. The purpose of writing these articles is to spread digital awareness. If you would like to consult me on how direct bookings can be increased for your property, you can drop me an email. I’d be happy to help you out. It’ll be completely free.