Competing with the Big Boys
One of the guys from our sales team had an interesting conversation with an hotelier during the week which brought to light something I wanted to share with you.
As I’m sure you already know one of the most important factors of online distribution is having a great booking engine, all the big chains have invested in it and many of the smaller hotels are turning around their way of thinking to include it also. Booking Engines come in many varied forms depending on the product, they can be embedded directly into your website, they can interface with your current PMS and they can be your Channel Manager but at the end of the day they all aim to do the same thing……convert more “lookers” on your website into “confirmed guests” for as little expense to you, the hotelier, as possible. At Auctas we have added a terrific system to our range of products (more on this in later blogs) that can do all of this and more so we are trying to make hoteliers aware of it.
The property in question has a website that is filled with terrific information to get you excited about staying with them and they have even thought about including a booking engine on their site but when you click on the “book now” button it takes you straight to an extranet channel to make the booking. Now as a consumer this wouldn’t cause you any concern but if we place ourselves in the shoes of the hotelier it just doesn’t make sense. Not only does the extra net channel take 10% commission per booking from you as their fee but they take payment for the booking and then don’t pass this revenue onto you, the provider, until a month after your guest has stayed with you.
So this leads me to the question…is the hotelier uneducated or have they become complacent? Why would you run your business this way if there was a simple product on the market that allowed bookings to come directly into your system along with the revenue, all for a low monthly flat fee?
When asked why they were running their business this way the hotelier replied “because it’s easier”. I ask you “Is it really easier in the long run to be giving someone else 10% of your revenue when you could be spending 1% on doing the same thing”?
