Please find below a number of articles from our
Discussion Area relating to the Hotel Online Marketing Industry. Currently the hot topic seems to be how to sell roooms though Online Travel Agents (ie CentralR, Booking.com etc), so we thought we would focus on that for this issue
Feel free to logon and disagree, or simply ask questions.
Why are Internet Rates So Often Wrong?
An analysis of why internet rates are so often wrong and what can be done about it.
Package Handling On Travel Portals
Are you using packages with your OTA's? A look at who can handle packages and who cant.
Hotels web site v's third party sites
A welcome development suggestion for AccuSell our inventory Management Tool
Here in full is the article ' Why are Internet Rates So Often Wrong?'
Take any given Sunday in winter, check hotel prices on a Travel Portal such as Hotels.com, and instinctively you will know that the rates being offered are too high, and you will almost certainly obtain better rates by telephoning the hotel directly, and this can be habit forming, ie the customer will just simply ring the hotel next time, tying up an expensive resource in the reception.
Why is this? Why is it easy enough to get the rates correct at the reception and not on the internet? The obvious answer is that updating a Booking Engine, or even worse, many Booking Engines, is time consuming, in addition many Reservation Staff are nervous about changing rates and running the risk of being scolded by the Manager, better to leave rates where they are (ie too high).
This can result in confusiion and frustration for staff when customers take them to task about the disparate prices, most of them have been educated by the likes of Ryanair to expect slightly cheaper prices on the web, but large disparities, or more expensive prices on the web creates consternation.
How can this be avoided?
Point Number 1 - Employ any of the many inventory tools on the market (ie Rate Tiger and of course our own; AccuSell) so that all the Booking Engines are updated AUTOMATICALLY.
Point Number 2 - Have the Management define a VERY CLEAR price/demand pricing strategy ie '50% full, reduce prices by 30%' etc. Have this strategy in full view of reservation staff.(Pinned behind the reception desk?)
Point Number 3 - If you are confident that the Booking Engine Prices are correctly updated, have the reservation staff offer prices over the counter/phone FROM the internet. ie They should perform a room search on the hotel website to get the correct rate.
The Final stage in this sequence is when the hotels reservation system is linked in to the booking engine, this will allow AUTOMATIC pricing without the need for a Revenue Manager to manually update the prices, and then using AccuSell will automatically put these prices onto the other Travel Portals. Check back in 8 weeks if you would like to see this final stage in operation!!!!!!!!
You dont agree? Express your opinions
HERE
Previous Bulletins
AccuBook Bulletin No 11 - Simplifying Google Adwords July 6th
AccuBook Bulletin No 10 - Online Travel Agents
AccuBook Bulletin No 9 - Gulliver Presentation
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