How to boost hotel bookings using your booking engine data

According to a recent report by Failte Ireland, international travel demand was back at 2019 levels for Spring 2022 led by significant increases in UK and US markets. Overall inbound travel is estimated to reach 60-70% of 2019 levels in 2022, and even business travel demand is strengthening.

Improved air access to Ireland from Great Britain, Europe and North America is apparently also helping to drive search demand for hotel bookings. So are the changing patterns related to work - remote workers are a whole new guest type.

Given all of this context, it's important to remember what a huge part your booking engine has to play in your hotel's overall direct booking success - especially at a time when OTAs are competing ruthlessly for their share of bookings. Direct bookings are less expensive than other online channels.

Your booking engine has (or should have) the ability to gather tons of very interesting and useful data which can be used to improve your revenue strategy. Extracting this data and applying it to your future strategies is the smart thing to do. Your booking engine is the tool that allows your guests to search for availability and book directly via your hotel website. The more intuitive it is is, the more conversions you’ll get.

Your booking engine works for you via:

• Direct hotel website (desktop and mobile)
• Meta search platforms
• Social media sites that facilitate direct bookings

You should be able to gather handy guest information which you can use to connect with guests and encourage higher value, repeated conversions. Accessing information on demand patterns, lead time information, search patterns is a crucial benefit to the tool.

Learn more about Net Affinity's booking engine

As with every element of your business, your booking engine will work the hardest for you when it is integrated with your demand forecasting and sales strategy - this way you will be able to see how it can enhance forecasting performance and conversions.

Read the rest of this piece over on Net Affinity's blog.