In a saturated online hospitality market where every website guarantees to offer the cheapest rates, hotels often lose out on direct bookings to consumers who (quite rightly) like to shop around for the best price. Not only does this mean less operating profit due to commission, but it can result in lost bookings when a consumer shops alternatives and competitors through OTAs.
Quantifying the impact of booking abandonment due to visitors looking to compare prices is challenging, but a recent study by Salecycle suggests that 37% of those who abandon a travel booking gave the reason ‘price too high / want to compare’. So what can hotels do to reduce this figure?
Sam Wilson and the team at Shire Hotels have taken a bold step to retain the visitor, allowing them to compare their own price against Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com and Late Rooms directly within their own website.
Obviously a strategy such as this will only work if you’re wholly confident in your revenue team maintaining rate parity. However, even in the rare instance when an OTA might appear cheaper, Shire Hotels request the visitor calls them so that they may match or even better the rate directly;
Their new site has only been live a matter of weeks, but it’s a bold move and it will be interesting to see if this reduces the volume of visitors abandoning the booking to compare prices on OTAs, resulting in a higher conversion rate.
Certainly the early signs are positive, with Shire Hotels E-Commerce Marketing Manager, Sam Wilson, commenting;
“When embarking on the project we aimed to create and implement new innovations not seen before in the hotel industry making our site as transparent to users as possible. One example of this is the price comparison tool that features on our booking pages – allowing users to see that we offer the best rate directly in comparison to the top 4 OTA’s. We are delighted how the new site looks, feels & functions and are excited to report that conversion is showing strong improvement – doubling year-on-year since the site launch”
TravelTripper has this feature as part of their booking engine now. A consumer always does price comparison and it is good to give this info on the hotel website as well. However, I would like to see some data of the overall impact.
Thanks Rajesh, didn’t realise that TravelTripper feature this. Haven’t seen it on a hotel site before myself but agree, it will be interesting to see what difference it makes to drop off and conversion. Hoping that Shire Hotels’ E-Commerce Marketing Manager Sam Wilson (who spear-headed the new site) can share some early results soon (it only went live just before Christmas). Will update the post accordingly.
They (TravelTripper) have introduced some great features around price comparison, for example, automatic application of Best Rate Guarantee policy if a cheaper rate is found on 3rd part sites. I love the initiative by the hotel itself though. It shows the ecommerce driven mindset. Will keep an eye on the update hopefully get to some data. 🙂
That’s pretty smart from TravelTripper, anything that saves the consumer time/money will undoubtedly be a winner. Have updated the article with a quote from Sam Wilson (Shire Hotels’ E-Commerce Marketing Manager) – apparently they’ve seen a doubling in conversion YoY.
That’s great! That is a pretty big boost in conversion. And, thanks for updating the post.
This is fantastic to see. It’s inevitable consumers will shop around these days. A ‘meta’-experience like this is surely going to reassure and persuade people to book direct.
I think there’s also a great educational opportunity here. For a while OTAs had the lowest prices, but more and more hotels are getting their rates in order. It will take time for consumers to recognise this, and this kind of application is an important part of that.
Shameless plug here but we’ve just launched a super-simple widget so any hotel can plug this tool directly into their booking engine. http://triptease.com
Hi Sam – very interesting post – I may have missed this but how are they getting round Booking.com best price gaunrentee?
Really a question for Sam Wilson (of Shire Hotels) as to the details of Shire Hotels’ BRG, but I’d imagine they’ll at least match Booking.com in any instance where the hotel is more expensive direct. Although they seem to have a very strong handle on rate parity (from testing a few dates it was challenging to find an example where the OTAs were more cheaper).
Hi Richard, Sam’s response is correct. We operate rate parity across all OTA’s and as such gives the consumer the choice where to book – we have just made the process quicker and easier for them to convert directly instead of leaving the site to book with a third party.
Sam