The Disadvantages Of Online Booking And How To Counter Them



The internet has revolutionized the world of hospitality for good. But it goes without saying that everything has its advantages and disadvantages, its positives and negatives, it's good and bad.


Online booking has a lot of advantages - convenience, visibility etc., but there are a number of disadvantages that can cripple your business if not handled well.


Let's take a look at some of them, and let's see how you can counter them effectively:



1. Too Many Options

Customers looking for accommodation online have just too many options nowadays. At one point they'd be on your website, the next on an OTA looking for other places. This way, your hotel is forgotten just as quickly as it is seen.
This is normal customer behavior, but you can counter it by using Google Adwords or Facebook Ads.


How?
These platforms generate a small line of code that can be added to your website. So, when a potential customer visits your website, it captures their information.


You must have seen ads of pages you've visited immediately after leaving those pages. This is called Remarketing, and that's what you should do, using Google Adwords to show ads of your hotel to those customers and reminding them of your existence.



  1. Customers Don't Know What They're Buying


At the end of it all, the customers are not buying from a person, but from a web page. They haven't checked out the room and they don't know what they're getting into.
This is a reason why many customers may bounce off your website - they don't know what they're buying.
How to counter this: Don't just post photos of your biggest and best room on your website or OTA listing. Post photos of all rooms for all budgets. Those photos should clearly showcase the bedroom, the bathrooms, and any other facilities.


This way, customers know immediately what to expect, and if it's good, they're in.



  1. Mobile-Unfriendly Booking Engine


Nobody likes inconvenience. If a potential customer finds booking a room at your hotel difficult on their smartphone because of your website's poor incompatibility on mobile browsers, you're going to lose that booking.
Actually, you'll lose a number of bookings.


Making a website with a booking engine is not enough. It should be mobile-friendly because around half the number of leisure travelers use their smartphones to book their accommodation.
  1. Tough Booking Process


Nothing turns a potential customer off quicker than a long-winded, complicated booking process.
Like someone has said, “Keep it simple, stupid.”
Make your booking process as short as possible with as much efficiency and effectiveness in information collection and security as possible.
Your booking process should take the minimum number of steps possible to complete a booking.
These are some of the problems faced by hoteliers when it comes to online bookings. Woodstock Digital understands these issues and provides solutions to carefully and precisely identify and rectify them.

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