Why is my hotel getting so few direct bookings?
Pull up your hotel on Google, Instagram and Booking.com. Look at the first photo and read the first line on each. What would someone remember about your hotel ten minutes later? If the answer could describe three other hotels nearby, I’d start there.
A guest might first see your hotel on Booking.com, look up your Instagram and open your website to compare rooms and rates. By the time they reach the booking engine, they’ve already formed an idea of the place. Your positioning and photography help give them a reason to choose your hotel. Your direct offer and booking experience help them decide where to book it.
Give people a reason to pick your hotel
If you run a lakeside hotel an hour from the city, “rooms with lake views and a restaurant” tells me what’s there. I’m more likely to remember that I could leave work on Friday, be by the water in time for dinner and spend Saturday without getting back in the car. That’s a weekend I can picture.
Start with the kind of stay your hotel does especially well. Think about who comes for it, what they make time for and what they talk about afterwards. Your team can probably tell you what guests book first and what they ask about before they arrive. Use that to decide which story leads on the homepage, what you shoot next and what you show in the first few seconds of a Reel.
Choose photos that show what the stay is like
Take a room with a lake view. On the room page and on Booking.com, I want to see the actual view from that room category and enough of the room to know what I’m booking. On Instagram, a shot of someone coming back from an early swim can tell me something else about the same place. Each image has a job. Think about where it will appear before you brief the shoot.
Put your first three photos from Google, Instagram, Booking.com and your homepage next to one another. Would a guest recognise the same hotel across all four? If the first image in every place is a wide shot of a bed, look through the rest of the gallery. There may already be a better lead image that shows why someone would choose your house.
At Seehotel Niedernberg, we photographed and filmed more of what guests could actually do there, including time on the water and golf nearby. That gave people a clearer picture of a stay by the lake. It also gives the marketing team a more specific question to work with. When someone sees the lake in a Reel and wants to spend the weekend there, which page should they land on? See our work for Seehotel Niedernberg
Work out where to make the first change
Look at how people arrive, how many open the booking engine and how many complete a reservation. Where your analytics allows it, follow the same visitors through each step. Few visits from a campaign give you a reason to review how and where you’re presenting the stay. Plenty of visits with few clicks into the booking engine give you a reason to review the landing page and offer. If guests reach the engine and rarely finish, check rates, availability and checkout. When the engine is hosted separately, check the reservation report to see whether completed bookings are reaching your analytics.
In our free Brand & Booking Audit, we look at how your hotel comes across online and what it takes for a guest to book. You’ll get a one-page plan with the changes we’d make first. Request the free Brand & Booking Audit
If you’re reviewing your wider distribution mix, we’ve also put together a direct booking guide and a calculator for OTA commissions. Direct booking guide · OTA commission calculator