05 Oct Is selling more rooms a problem for you? Use all the power of the Billboard effect and find the solution! Do you want to minimize the number of empty rooms? Here is how you can achieve it in two steps thanks to the Billboard Effect.
Do you run a hotel, a B&B, an agritourism, or any other type of accommodation facility? Do you know that thanks to the Billboard Effect you can sell more rooms?
In this article I’m going to explain to you what to do not to miss the chance of taking full advantage of the power of the Billboard Effect, thus obtaining a substantial increase in your bookings by accurately using OTAs.
You only need 2 minutes and the will to finally say no to vacant rooms and potential guests that fail to book!
Before continuing, I only want to point out that: I am aware that there is a debate on the Billboard Effect and many experts believe it is no longer efficient. But I have a different opinion and if you have the patience to keep on reading, I’ll tell you why being present on at least 10-15 OTAs can boost your room sales and profits, and get you an ever increasing number of domestic and international guests.
Here is why the Billboard Effect helps you boost sales and reservations.
Let’s take a step back in time, shall we? In 2009 a Cornwell University study showed that reservations for hotel and other types of accommodation facilities increase if these are present on OTAs (online travel agencies).
The reasons behind this increase are very simple, and I’m going to list them immediately:
- OTAs are the First search engine used by customers to compare rooms, services, accommodations and their prices;
- OTAs increase customer flow on the accommodation facilities’ websites;
- OTAs are free because you only pay commissions on actual sales;
- OTAs improve visibility and Brand Awareness of the accommodation facilities;
- OTAs increase direct bookings of rooms at hotels, B&B and any other type of accommodation facility.
Please note: this increase could be of up to 30-35% even, so we’re talking about substantial increments for hotel managers like you, who want to get the highest profit from their rooms and never want to see them vacant.
If you are, as I think, wondering how can OTAs make you so successful in terms of sales, I’m sure you’ll be interested in finding out what’s the “Google →OTA + TripAdvisor →Booking Method” used by 97% of the web users: I’ll tell you right away!
I’m talking about the method your potential guests use to book a room anywhere in the world.
Yes, that’s correct: anywhere in the world.
Since the advent of the web, in fact, the time when travelers had to go to a brick-and-mortar travel agency, indeed a local one, is over.
Today, those who travel for business or leisure book their accommodation by themselves, simply thanks to an internet connection, whether they need a room in their home country or abroad.
How? I’ll give you a very trivial example.
Pretend that you manage an hotel in London and have to sell your rooms.
This is what your potential guest does:
- Searches on Google “London Hotel” (not your website).
- as a search results Google IMMEDIATELY shows OTAs, that the user consults together with review sites (TripAdvisor).
- the potential guest takes note of the hotels that he thinks can guarantee rooms, services, stay and tariffs in line with his needs.
- He goes back to Google and searches for the names of the hotels he liked best, lands on their websites and books a room in (what he thinks is) the most suitable hotel.
- Alternatively, he books the room DIRECTLY on an OTA.
As you see, the intermediation of OTAs strongly affects your chance to get more views on your websites, more reservations, more customers and consequently higher revenues. Obviously, this is if you are on several OTAs and your offers are clear, detailed and with truly competitive tariffs.
During my multi-years experience in the field of accommodation facilities I’ve become increasingly more convinced of one thing, and I really want to tell you what it is. That’s because I want to warn you against one of the most dangerous mistakes that many of your colleagues make when they use OTAs to exploit the Billboard Effect: it is NOT enough to use 1 or 2 OTAs to increase your room sales!
In fact, if you really want to get the most from the potentials of the Web and ensure a constant customer flow in your accommodation, I advise you to follow these steps:
- Get a website for you accommodation facility, making sure it is created by expert and perfectly optimized.
- Be on almost 10-15 OTAs and advertise your offers clearly and in detail.
- Choose a multicanal marketing strategy for tourism.
Why am I saying this?
Because the Billboard Effect does not depend only on OTAs – something also attested by Mark Starkov, one of the leading global expert on tourist marketing.
Actually, your online visibility and your ability to increase reservations depend also on a good optimization of your website, on pay-per-click campaigns, e-mail marketing, the creation of an advertising banner and even the publication of an ad in an online trade magazine.
Do you already have a website and use OTAs to promote your rooms? Or, have you just started running an accommodation and would like to take advantage of the visibility the Web offers?
2 steps you must take to sell more rooms thanks to the Billboard Effect
In both cases, in order to boost your business, the first step is to use 10-15 OTAs simultaneously to promote your facility and achieve a very high number of potential guests.
The second step is to get a Channel manager to help you, a tool that automatically manages descriptions and tariffs of your rooms, simultaneously updating their availability once one or more rooms have been booked. This step is extremely important if you want to use the online travel agencies and the booking websites without wasting whole days advertising and changing your offers.
Are you aware of what happens to those who don’t use a Channel Manager or use one with low-performing features?
It is something that I hope you’ll never have to go through, something you can easily avoid thanks to a specialized software… I’m talking about the manual modification of the number of rooms still available, their prices, the percentage of discount you want to apply, EACH TIME even just one of your rooms has been booked and ON ALL the OTAs you normally use.
In conclusion, a mindless effort and waste of time, besides considering that you will also have to log-in several times in all the OTAs to change the data.
It’s the case of a profit becoming a loss, isn’t it?
On the other hand, using a Channel Manager conceived and designed for your specific needs means you avoid all this useless work. You also avoid the risk of Overbooking, a real tragedy, as you well know, for those who manage an accommodation facility like you and unintentionally can find themselves with a guest in their hotel and no rooms available!
I would like to be very clear with you, because I’ve worked as a hotel manager for years and and I know what it means to run a business like yours: take advantage of the power of the Billboard Effect right now and do it accurately, running no risks.
You can get up to 30-35% more reservations than usual, reservations that mean higher profits!
To achieve this, you only need 10-15 OTAs and a Channel Manager specifically conceived to meet your needs. If you follow my advice, I promise you that the increase of your bookings won’t be a remote chance, but a tangible reality you can get your hands on every time you sell a room to a new guest.
I know you want to eliminate the risk of vacant rooms right now as they don’t bear fruit and I know you’re looking for a quick way to get an ever-growing number of reservations.
That’s why I’m sure you don’t want to miss out on my unbeatable offer. To find out immediately what it is simply CLICK HERE!
Furthermore, in order to thank you for reading all my article, that I hope you found very useful, I want to give you an exclusive gift: the Accommodation facility Web guide. How to automatically increase reservations and sales. We wrote this guide for those who, like you, want to raise their customer flow thanks to an automatic system already tested by more than 3.200 of your colleagues, and nullify the possible risk of vacant rooms.
To download your Free Guide, CLICK HERE!
You will easily receive it by email and it only takes few minutes to read.
Till the next article!
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