A V Continent's guest room: El Sherif says he thinks of his website as an extra salesperson. A V Continent's guest room: El Sherif says he thinks of his website as an extra salesperson.

Ease of use
All the issues that hotels need to address on their websites “relate back to ease,” explains Rezidor’s area director of revenue optimisation, Middle East & Sub Saharan Africa, Shabana Beg. “A customer uses online booking facilities because it should be quick and hassle free.”

When designing the group’s website, Beg explains that comprehensive interviews were held with all of the main corporate teams within Rezidor and a content strategy was developed for each one, with aims, objectives and messaging developed. The site features one-page tabs which are designed to “simplify navigation to related content”.

Hotel websites also “need to have sufficient information that would convince the client to make a booking right away,” says Tarek El Sherif, managing director, V Five Continents Hospitality Group. “They need to be simple in design and user friendly — easy to navigate,
easy to find information and easy to make a booking.”

El Sherif explains: “Nowadays, clients do not read much during browsing, except if an eye catching word or image motivates them to go deeper, and this is a big challenge.” Beg adds that “in order to keep clients on the website longer than your competitors you need to have the right buzz words right on the first page so it will entice the client to click and navigate further on the website.”

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This, in turn, will sell the brand image to the potential guests and “build brand loyalty,” adds Beg — all of the information was required to “complement the strong visual identity of Rezidor”.

Local Knowledge
One area in which hotel websites can trump OTAs is with their local knowledge and expertise. Marcos Cadena, Anantara’s director of electronic distribution, says: “One of our brand values is to give a local experience to our customers, something that you cannot get from an OTA. This is reflected in Anantara’s website content, which offers a unique user experience and information.”

The brand’s website includes information on its destinations, such as the climate, currency and local business hours, as well as transportation and shopping tips. “In the Middle East, over 30% of all our revenue is driven through online channels and this is growing at a fast pace,” Cadena adds.

“The increases in revenues are really significant as brand websites have the best ADR of all revenue sources. By using a direct channel, a brand reduces its cost of sale compared to the OTA, which would have a cost between 18 to 25%, compared to the brand site cost of between four and six percent.

Therefore, hotels that focus on using their own sites and on getting out in the market can see an increase of up to 15% of their revenue.”

Booking Engine
Another major aspect of whether a customer will book through a hotel’s website is the booking engine — like the site, it needs to be clear, easy-to-use and allow the guest to get where they need to be in a minimal number of clicks.

Micros-Fidelio GmbH senior vice president e-commerce and strategic solutions, EMEA, Peter Agel explains that “the truly integrated booking engine should match the look and feel of the website and collect minimum guest information that is required to make the booking”.

Choosing your booking engine can also have a major impact on the cost per online booking, with a range of solutions available, from customised options, such as Micros Fidelio “best-of breed” engines from EUR 40,000 (US $51,512) plus monthly recurring fees, to a standard off-the-shelf solution for individual hotels based on fixed fees per room.

Rezidor’s Beg agrees: “It is just very surprising, if not intriguing, why hotels still seem to lag behind when it comes to their own booking facilities on their websites, compared to the good jobs done by the third-party providers such as Booking.com”.

Rezidor’s website features a single booking engine, where all of the group’s properties are available to book once a destination and date has been entered. Once implemented, the benefits of a well-designed booking engine are two-fold - both customers and the hotel will benefit.

When implementing a booking engine, “it’s of great importance that the user is the main priority,” explains Agel. “A multi-lingual booking engine and multi-lingual content for rate and room type descriptions are key,” he adds.

Beg agrees: “One definite issue is the lack of websites and content available in Arabic”. 

Agel continues: “Users shop around before they book, so the overall concept must reflect the booking engine, the rate strategy and the content, which needs to be more appealing than OTAs. In addition, hotels can win with offering more content and better pricing, provided they dare to risk rate-parity conflicts with the OTAs — which they should do.”

“[Users] tend to go from site to site and if the brand website rate is not consistent with those on the OTA this definitely discourages the customer from booking through the brand site,” agrees Cadena.

However, instead of undercutting OTAs to attract guests to book directly, Cadena is of the opinion that maintaining price parity between all channels is best, as it doesn’t “confuse the customer” and makes the site seem “more credible”.

In terms of hotel benefits, the back-end of a booking engine is of the utmost importance, and “integration with hotel systems — either CRS or PMS — is a must,” says Agel. This will ensure that all booking details online are in real-time, and cuts out unnecessary labour costs.

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