When travellers are in the process of booking a hotel, they tend to gravitate toward bigger brand hotels. When managing smaller, less widely known listings, it can sometimes be difficult to lure in customers. However, these aren’t the only reason for low booking rates. There are many other reasons such as being new to the industry, off-season, your hotel brand name is not yet well known and many more. Here are four ways to boost your booking rates.

1. Promote Customer Reviews

When travellers are in the process of deciding which hotel to book, guest reviews are often the first place they check. When people are searching for reviews, their search engine will typically put the hotels with an abundance of reviews on the first page of google. However, if your hotel doesn’t have any reviews, it is much more difficult for a person to find it. A way to increase reviews is providing an offer or added benefit to your guests before they depart your property. In exchange for a review, you can offer them a discount on their stay or a box of chocolates, or anything in between. Not only does this give them the incentive to give your property a review, it also is a cost-efficient way of elevating their experience during their stay. Responding to the reviews can also help gain more reviews because this proves that you enjoy interacting with your customers and value what they have to say. According to Hotel News Now, hotels with fifty or more reviews are 1.4% more likely to get booked.

2. Include A Photo Gallery

Rather than a textual description of your hotel, lure your guests in with photos of your property. In order to attract customers, the photos should be high-quality images that make your hotel guests excited to sleep away from their home. Make sure the set up of the rooms are visually appealing to the customer and not a disorganized, messy room. As for the photos, they should be taken by a professional with a high-quality camera, not by an amateur with a smartphone.

3. Include In-Depth Descriptions of Rooms and Amenities

Providing detailed room and property descriptions can boost booking rates by five percent and increase your average daily rate by five dollars. The reason you will want in-depth descriptions of everything offered at your hotel is that a customer may be searching for a specific thing, such as a fitness centre. When a customer searches for the amenity, the online travel agency (OTA) will provide the traveller with all the hotels that have fitness centres in their description. However, if your hotel has one, but does not have it in the description, it will not show up online.

4. Work With a Market Manager

A market manager can be one of the most helpful people on your journey to boost your hotel’s booking rates. They know everything about the industry, like upcoming market trends that can have an effect on your booking rates. Having a market manager also helps you when there may be a decrease in bookings in your area by helping you prepare for it. This is extremely advantageous because a market manager can not only give you strategies about how to keep your booking rates up but predict unforeseen circumstances, preparing how to deal with them early.

In such a competitive industry, it can be difficult for smaller properties to get high booking rates. However, it is possible to attract customers if you strategically plan how you’re going to increase booking rates and carry out the plan by using the tips mentioned above.

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InnQuest Software is a leading technology provider for the hospitality industry. For over 25 years, innQuest has combined hotelier experience with innovative technology to deliver an all-in-one solution that empowers hotels to attract guests, drive customer loyalty, and increase profits. Our flagship property management software, roomMaster, helps manage over 5,500 properties across 100 countries. InnQuest develops scalable solutions ranging from a Hotel PMS, Cloud PMS, Channel Manager, Hotel CRM and helps properties enable guests to Book Direct. We believe that everyone deserves a great guest experience, whether they’re staying at a small B&B, a thousand-room resort, or anywhere in between.

Call us today at 1.813.288.4900, or email us at sales@innquest.com. We will be happy to walk you through innQuest’s solutions.