At Charlestowne Hotels, our OTA strategy is concentrated on the saturation of all modes and disciplines at each segment of the booking cycle, from parity and inventory control, to digital marketing, acquisition and cost analysis, as well as brand identity and loyalty.
Our first top line goal when assessing the OTA approach with our hotel partners is to gain total control over the inventory and rates. We can then disseminate parity moving forward, making sure a hotel’s direct booking channels reflect the best possible rate (or one that is at least equal to our OTA partners). This builds trust with guests, ensuring that they will return to the hotel sites when booking a future stay. On the other hand, we consistently see that our competitors do not effectively manage their rates and inventory, and they often provide exclusive sales to partners that are not offered to guests on their own website.
Since today’s consumer is an avid shopper with the ability to check and compare prices right at their fingertips, we cannot rely on a consumer to return to our site on their own without providing them with the tools and the incentive to do so. At Charlestowne, we execute a number of digital campaigns to retain visitors and convert direct bookings.
In addition to utilizing segmented data to target specific consumer demographics or geographic regions, two of our major efforts include re-targeting potential guests and preventing shopping cart abandonment. These two initiatives are today’s version of a “responsive website” and to succeed, you have to be doing them. Moreover, we are very close to enacting what we believe will be the next trend in the digital world – displaying your own hotel’s OTA rates on the hotel’s individual website. This is similar to the model insurance companies use when publishing competitor rates and we feel this could help limit the number of websites a potential guest will visit, ultimately lowering transaction costs and further building trust between the consumer and the hotel website.
While these tools help improve direct conversion rates, we strive to effectively balance channel shifting marketing efforts with acquisition cost. By combining our marketing and revenue metrics, we can often look at a guest’s booking process and their potential to return, allowing us to understand the attributed cost of booking (i.e. Google pay per click, re-targeting and cart abandonment).
When constructed and used correctly, analytics data, PMS reporting and expense lines can then drive marketing and budgeting efforts. In addition, we rely on our brand identity efforts to keep a guest engaged from website entry through final booking, and even during the full term of their stay. That said, we use the term “brand” loosely. For us, “brand” means a distinct and individualized hotel identity and ensuring consistency throughout the guests’ journey. Successful execution of the aforementioned strategy is contingent on our ability to provide a personalized, unique and creative interaction between all hotel departments and our guests.
Through consistent visibility across all platforms, from digital assets to on-site signage, the brand identity will secure product differentiation and build loyalty.Beginning with the booking process and continuing through a guest’s stay, we concentrate on five guest engagement touchpoints. Previous guests and those who request hotel news are delivered messages on exclusive deals, announcements, recipes, events, etc. on a monthly basis. These efforts prove beneficial in many ways, but as it relates to reservations, it can be the difference in filling demand holes with those in your database versus loading an OTA flash sale. Furthermore, it can be beneficial in educating consumers who booked their initial stay on a partner site – communicating that the direct booking experience not only offers the same rate or better, but it can be a more consistent, and informative experience.
We acknowledge that getting 100% direct bookings to hotel websites is unrealistic for many of our properties, but we utilize the above collection of initiatives to capture as much as we can. With the saturation approach, you are able obtain guest loyalty without solely relying on high cost channels.
Contributed by Michael Tall, president and COO, Charlestowne Hotels, a hotel management company based in Charleston, South Carolina