Booking Engine

A booking engine is an online tool that allows you to take direct reservations from guests on your website, via social media channels, and via metasearch sites. The main purpose is to reduce your reliance on third-party booking sites, gain greater control of your guest relationships, and give travellers an easy and secure way to make a booking. It will also help you maximise your hotel’s direct revenue, guest loyalty, and profit.

Your business greatly benefits from a booking engine by driving direct commission-free bookings and building guest loyalty. Direct bookings are key as part of a balanced direct and indirect distribution strategy that maximises revenue and occupancy. Booking engine software will also integrate seamlessly with your website and other software such as your hotel channel manager.

A wholly-branded booking engine for your hotel’s website helps you to attract, reach and convert guests directly. With the right booking engine in place:

• You can increase conversions with a simple guest booking experience
• You can save time with quick and easy setup
• You can eliminate manual data entry with instant integration
• You can make better decisions with data
• You can build a personal relationship with your guests
  
  

Ultimately you’ll improve your occupancy, reputation, and bottom line.

When looking at a booking engine or comparing two or more options, focus on the following features as a priority:

A seamless booking experience for your guests. Your booking engine should enable a guest to click the ‘Book Now’ button on your website and complete their reservation within a few clicks, including payment, without being redirected or completing long winded forms.

It should also show your guests all the dates and rooms that you have available in real-time, ensuring your hotel never receives any double bookings.

Set up for all types of guests and payments. All hotels need to look beyond their own borders to boost occupancy so it’s important your booking engine offers multiple languages, currencies, and credit or virtual cards so international travellers can enjoy the same convenient booking process as domestic guests.

Optimised for all devices and integrations. To maximise bookings you need to be able to take bookings from travellers using mobile devices, those booking via Facebook, and those booking via metasearch. It’s also important that your booking engine can connect with other systems like your PMS, channel manager, or hotel apps.

Control over the guest relationship. Taking direct bookings gives you a unique opportunity to personalise the experience for your guests and build relationships that foster long term loyalty. Ensure your chosen booking engine enables personalised communication, the ability to offer exclusive packages, and allows guests to choose exciting extras when they book.

Customisation. It’s important that the look and feel of your booking engine matches your hotel brand and website to ensure the reservation experience is frictionless.

Additional revenue streams. The ability to upsell so you can offer a more personalised stay and increase revenue per guest is crucial to improving the profitability of your hotel.

Key integrations. Integration with all of your booking sites through a channel manager, Google Analytics, Google Adwords and eCommerce tracking will help you analyse direct booking trends – including website traffic, conversion rates, and ROI.

You can get a free period of PlanetHMS booking engine while you explore the features and suitability for your hotel. With a free trial, you’ll be able to understand the value that a hotel booking engine offers your business.

Once your free period is over you can choose to invest knowing your return on investment will be much greater than your monthly fee, or you can cancel anytime with no questions asked. When you sign-up with PlanetHMS, there is no credit card required and no lock-in contracts. Click here to get started today!