NEWS Topic of ThE moNTh markETiNg oN-liNE pulS Spa
Vip iNTErViEW rEporT coNcEpT & DESigN TEchNology & EquipmENT
MarKEting on-linE
What Is Important When Choosing Your Booking Engine?
At the centre of your CRM strategy
A booking engine is far more than a tool that allows customers to book your hotel. It should be designed to maximise your conversion rates of lookers to bookers, thus
increasing your revenue and the return on investment in website design and online marketing.
ABILENE BALDWIN
Furthermore, your booking engine Improving your website conversion
must provide essential information on your rate
customers. Each time a customer searches Confidence and comfort of
your booking engine for rooms and rates Booking Direct!
you have a ‘sales opportunity’, and the You want your customer to
booking engine should collect all the key know that they are booking DIRECTLY
s
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information about these sales opportunities. with you and not with an intermediary,
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Monitoring how customers respond to your so complete integration of the book-
rates and availablity and analysing their ing engine with your website style is very
next steps is critical in understanding how important. The booking engine should Dealing with
you are converting each opportunity. not be a pop up or link to another Families and
Finally, your booking engine is at the centre website – it should be like another Groups requir-
of your CRM strategy, collecting and profil- page of your website. ing different room
ing information on your customers and in- It is also very important to preserve types.
terfacing with your CRM systems. your website navigation throughout the Does the booking engine al-
This article considers what questions reservation process as customers may want low a group or a family to book different
you must ask when choosing your booking to double-check room details or other hotel room types in one booking? Some systems
engine. There are three categories we will information before they finalise their book- a process and you need to be able to see only allow one room type to be booked at
look at: ing, so all navigation buttons should be every step. How many airlines have a one- a time, so cannot allow a family to book
• Improving your website conversion rate available to make this easy. page booking process? As the customer one double and one twin for example.
• Analyising your sales opportunities and A one-page booking process may moves from step to step you can learn a lot
customer Behaviour look nice but it does not let you see the cus- about Date Flexibility, Rate Sensitivity, Pack- Special Offers
• Improving your Customer Relationship tomer booking process as a ‘process’ be- age Preference, etc., so a ‘stepped’ book- Can the customer browse your offers
Management (CRM) cause it all happens on one page. Sales is ing process is critial. by category (Spa Breaks, Weekend / Mid-
NOVEMBER 2009 13
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