A recurrent theme through these pages has been the desire of hotels, whether chains and independents, to capture an increased share of the rapidly growing online travel market. Either for strategic or more frequently for distribution cost reasons, most hotels want to drive more bookings through their own direct Brand.com websites.
Unfortunately achieving this is quite difficult. Over the past decade, online travel agencies have continually been more successful than brand website at both capturing and converting the customer, with the end result that most online hotel bookings flow through indirect channels. In most European countries, indirect bookings currently make up two-third of hotel’s online business, and this proportion is in general growing despite the best efforts of the hotel chains.
What then are hotels doing wrong? The answer (in most cases) is nothing. Most have adequate websites, featuring attractive photos and well written copy text, and include appropriate booking facilities to allow customers to complete the transaction if they so wish. The challenge is not that hotels are doing something wrong, just that they are not doing enough. Adequate is no longer sufficient: to successfully compete in today’s electronic marketplace, websites have to be better than adequate.
