The Booking Journey That's Costing You Thousands in Revenue

Bezos figured out the power of speeding up the interaction to booking process in 1999 when he filed the patent for one-click checkouts. It’s time we take advantage of something similar.

Here’s how you can stop relying on OTAs, speed up your guest booking journey and ultimately have more money flow down to your bottom line.

The Booking Journey on an OTA

OTAs are the highest friction booking funnel for any operator. Every step of the process is another reason for your future guest to say “no.”

Let’s walk through the guest booking journey on an OTA:

1. The guest enters their desired destination and 300+ hotels or vacation rentals quickly populate with countless filter options.

Does your property not include one small amenity they checked? Or is $1 out of their price filter? They will never see your stay.

2. After that they start scrolling through pages and pages of listings, checking overall ratings, prices, discounts offered, etc.

Is your rating slightly lower, are you stuck on page 5 or are you not offering discounts? Again, they might never see your stay (or they’ll scroll right past).

3. If they ever reach your page, they get the same page layout as every other property on the platform. No stunning videos, customizable pages or ways to standout..

This essentially forces them to make a decision based on your pictures, prices and location.

4. After the first round of cuts, they'll have 4-6 tabs open with potential choices. They will then meticulously comb through the reviews, looking for even the slightest flaw.

One guest complained about the bed? They just closed your page because they have four other options already lined up.

5. If your property makes it to the finals of their search, they’ll be deal hunting. Who has the best price to quality ratio?

Not trying to compete on price? You just got filtered out and they booked with someone else.

Every step of the way is another reason for them to say “no.”

Had we been fully reliant on OTAs with the Onera Wimberley opening, we likely would have launched to crickets instead of 1,200,000+ views in just a handful of reels.

The Booking Journey on Social Media

Social media is the one click checkout of the hospitality world. 

A guest stumbles onto your post and is immediately enthralled by a video that showcases how their exact experience might look at your property.

They get to actually picture themselves there, rather than staring at five different stock photos of beds, showers and rooms trying to figure out which they’d like the most.

And that leads right into the next point… from the moment they click into your page all they see is one thing–your property.

There aren’t pages and pages of options, it’s just you and a link to book with you.

Once they click your link, you control the process. You can structure your website how you want, guide them through your funnel, and halve the time from click to booking.

Maybe they aren’t ready to book yet, that’s fine, they can follow you so that you are constantly popping up on their feed and reminding them of where they should go on their next trip.

Something an OTA would never be able to do.

Our Other Favorite Social Media Benefits:

• You “own” the guest’s contact information and can remarket to them.

• You get to show the guests behind-the-scenes content.

• You save 14%+ OTA fees, improving your bottom line.

• You aren’t attracting “price shoppers”

Putting your ROI in the hands of someone else is never a great idea, especially when it comes to OTAs. 

You end up relying on their algorithm for guests to see you, praying for 5 star reviews so your ranking isn’t impacted and losing out on guests to the 300 other stays to choose from.

Sure, they have millions of people coming to their platform every week to get you bookings. But, Instagram has over 500 million daily active users. For us, the choice is easy.