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In the meantime, without OTAs (Online Travel Agency), many hotels would no longer have bookings. Because the trend is clearly towards independent booking via online platforms. Why is that so? And is that bad? And how can I establish my own booking process as a hotel? We'll show you how to build up your own marketing over the long term.
Why am I dependent on OTAs?
More and more people are booking their hotel via the Internet, which was of course not always the case. In the past, many more bookings were made over the telephone, as well as travel agents or tourist information one.
It is easy to find out where the respective bookings come from and which channel they were made via. The costs of using these sales channels were also limited and manageable. This allowed you to secure multiple channels and receive bookings in various ways.
However, in recent years, online travel agencies have established themselves as an unavoidable platform for generating bookings. It is important to know how dependent I am on these online travel agencies. When do I get too many bookings via OTAs and too few bookings via other channels?
My experience shows that when I receive well over 60% of my total bookings through online travel agencies, I should develop alternative ideas. One simple and controllable method is to set up online marketing.
A simple calculation shows that we can place ads ourselves. An online travel agency such as booking is often already using the ads.
Where did my bookings come from before I started using OTAs?
In the past, most bookings were received by telephone at the hotel. In addition, through travel agencies and tourist information offices, which arrange rooms in the city. However, those days are gone and the demand for travel agents or booking over the phone is falling year after year.
How do I avoid dependency on OTAs?
There are of course many ways to advertise a hotel, in my last post I went into more detail about marketing. Here is the link to the article Online marketing in the hotel industry — the CPB as a measure.
First and foremost, we have learned how important it is to do our own marketing. In my opinion, however, far too few hotels are actually still doing marketing. In addition, they don't have their numbers under control, which is a shame, as they could free themselves from dependency on OTAs with simple methods.
Is additional marketing worthwhile?
In short, as a marketer, I would recommend marketing to every hotel.
What should I do when implementing my own marketing? You should pick up the people who are interested in your hotel directly.
Here's an example: When a customer is looking for accommodation at your hotel, they intend to book an overnight stay and are actively looking for offers for your accommodation. This is your chance to attract potential guests to your site. If the booker is directed directly to your site, there is a high probability that the booking will be completed. On average, the booking rate is between 2-4%. This means that out of 100 guests who visit your website, 2-4 guests book an overnight stay.
Take a look at your competitors, as soon as marketing starts, it should be worthwhile. With Booking, it's relatively easy to recognize this, as soon as Booking bids on keywords, it must be worthwhile for them.
There are also tools that you can use to analyze your competition.
Here I can Bigspy And the Facebook Ads Library recommend.
When setting up my ads, I proceed as follows: I rate my campaigns based on the extent to which the customer is willing to book a room.
Remarketing should be started in these first steps, as these are usually cheap bookings. In addition, money has already been invested in a customer once, so the purchase should be completed. It is also a way to show regular customers pictures of your hotel over and over again and to evoke positive memories.
Happiness is when opportunity meets willingness - Fred Endrikat
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Conclusion
Based on my experience, every hotel should do its own marketing. At the beginning, a lack of knowledge is certainly a major hurdle to getting started, but this should not be an obstacle. Online marketing should not be neglected! An alternative would be to fill a 450€ position or accept a student assistant.
