Tips to Revamp Your Hotel’s Distribution in 2018

Changes in market volume level tends to be less disturbed in relation to the latest market developments. Bringing the picture to reality in most cases leads to a “cruise speed” on which hotels must learn how to balance themselves to be truly relevant. While it’s true that there are segments of Early Adopters, such as Millennials, which we would have very specific approaches, here we are going to present to you a more general proposal. Therefore, from BEONx we propose 10 ideas to work on for 2018 to improve your competitiveness and, therefore, optimize the distribution of your accommodation:

• Web optimization. It’s important to having our web resources seen as a “living organism” that needs a constant parameterization with the environment. Knowing what’s happening on the web at all times, updating it and implementing improvements are some of the dynamics that we must adopt. Just as aesthetic and operational changes are necessary in the accommodation, on the web they’re even more seen as a must for online distribution.

• Booking Engine. If there is a key element in hotel direct bookings, that would be the booking engine. With mechanical aspects more or less overcome, there is still a pending subject called UX (User Experience), or usability of the tool, and that generates the desired attraction by the user at the time of booking. The OTAs had this “battle” won long ago and few are the “technological players” that compete in technological innovation with their booking functionalities.

• Channel Manager. Channel Managers are essential to the assets of any hotels this year. The control of inventory, the amplitude in the distribution without barriers in the channels or even the chance of not making any errors are some of the advantages in the use of these technologies. We must partake in the use of this kind of tools and take a step further in terms of their operability and functionality adding the versatility and adaptation to market needs is one of the maxims of this type of tools.

• Revenue Management Systems. The implementation of an intelligent pricing strategy in our establishment will increase the advantages of this in factors such as competitiveness, flexibility and profitability. The software that facilitates a revenue management strategy is a reality that adapts to the technology and cost of any type of accommodation. This year, having an RMS like BEONx in your accommodation will be a clear approach to competitiveness and optimization of your resources.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The influence of SEO in the decision-making process remains, to this day, a conditioning factor. Knowing how to attack organic positioning on certain keywords in the web is a crucial aspect to feed our hotel’s web with relevant traffic. Gaining visibility on our target audience will largely determine the success or failure of our direct booking generation strategy.

• Presence in metasearch engines. The metasearch engines and their comparative power continue to exert a great influence on the traveler. Their visibility is such that they nourish traffic to platforms like Booking.com where, according to the study of the platform  SimilarWeb, the 30% of the traffic on this platform comes from the metasearch engines. Taking advantage of the channeling of traffic on CPC or CPA will be an approach to success that hotels should adopt for 2018.

• Online-Offline Reputation Management. Continuous feedback and learning about information flows, such as those generated by portals such as Tripadvisor or even with the paper forms of the hotel, will be decisive in connecting feedback from the traveler to the product. Having a software that makes it possible to channel all this intelligence and present it in synthesized reports of suggested improvements will be a delicacy with which to feed the housing quality departments. 

• Professionalization in the management of CRM. The evolution of the Big Data concept towards Smart Data inevitably involves the intelligent use of CRM. If we integrate email automation systems with this technology, we ‘ll be investing in a low-cost tool to improve the traveler experience relating to our accommodation. Therefore, unifying Email Marketing and CRM will be one of the major challenges of our establishment.

• Social Media. The professionalization of soc
  ial network management will continue to be one of the challenges of many hotels. Having saturated resources ‘till the point we have to place the management of these channels will not be the way. The proposals of 360º strategies, in which social networks are one more channel to reinforce will be decisive this year, taking advantage of social networks as channels for paid traffic, at a very competitive price, will be a proposal to put on the table.

• Chatbots. Although with an incursion of this service to the market was rather slow than what was expected, the Chatbots are, a tool to streamline very primary phases of interaction with the traveler. In turn, its integration with booking engines and its simplicity in the integration with the PMS of the hotel make the Chatbots follow a firm step for this 2018.

With all these factors of improvement in hotel distribution at your disposal, we hope that this year is a fantastic year for the tourism sector and for the professionalization of it. At BEONx we’re committed on adopting a role of accompaniment and mentoring that will help you on your way to an intelligent and profitable distribution.