Hotel Booking Engine

A booking engine is an online tool that allows you to take direct reservations from guests on your website, via social media channels, and via metasearch sites. The main purpose is to reduce your reliance on third-party booking sites, gain greater control of your guest relationships, and give travellers an easy and secure way to make a booking. It will also help you maximise your hotel’s direct revenue, guest loyalty, and profit.

Your business greatly benefits from a booking engine by driving direct commission-free bookings and building guest loyalty. Direct bookings are key as part of a balanced direct and indirect distribution strategy that maximises revenue and occupancy. Booking engine software will also integrate seamlessly with your website and other software such as your hotel channel manager.

A wholly-branded booking engine for your hotel’s website helps you to attract, reach and convert guests directly. With the right booking engine in place:

• You can increase conversions with a simple guest booking experience
• You can save time with quick and easy setup
• You can eliminate manual data entry with instant integration
• You can make better decisions with data
• You can build a personal relationship with your guests

Ultimately you’ll improve your occupancy, reputation, and bottom line.

When looking at a booking engine or comparing two or more options, focus on the following features as a priority:

A seamless booking experience for your guests. Your booking engine should enable a guest to click the ‘Book Now’ button on your website and complete their reservation within a few clicks, including payment, without being redirected or completing long winded forms.

It should also show your guests all the dates and rooms that you have available in real-time, ensuring your hotel never receives any double bookings.

Set up for all types of guests and payments. All hotels need to look beyond their own borders to boost occupancy so it’s important your booking engine offers multiple languages, currencies, and credit or virtual cards so international travellers can enjoy the same convenient booking process as domestic guests.

Optimised for all devices and integrations. To maximise bookings you need to be able to take bookings from travellers using mobile devices, those booking via Facebook, and those booking via metasearch. It’s also important that your booking engine can connect with other systems like your PMS, channel manager, or hotel apps.

Control over the guest relationship. Taking direct bookings gives you a unique opportunity to personalise the experience for your guests and build relationships that foster long term loyalty. Ensure your chosen booking engine enables personalised communication, the ability to offer exclusive packages, and allows guests to choose exciting extras when they book.

Customisation. It’s important that the look and feel of your booking engine matches your hotel brand and website to ensure the reservation experience is frictionless.

Additional revenue streams. The ability to upsell so you can offer a more personalised stay and increase revenue per guest is crucial to improving the profitability of your hotel.

Key integrations. Integration with all of your booking sites through a channel manager, Google Analytics, Google Adwords and eCommerce tracking will help you analyse direct booking trends – including website traffic, conversion rates, and ROI.

When choosing the best booking engine for your hotel, ask yourself: does the booking engine integrate with your property’s website? Many website management tools (CMS) and booking engines will not work together seamlessly.

Secondly, if you want to attract global travellers you need a booking engine that is available in multiple languages and can support secure online payments in multiple currencies.

Next, you want a booking engine that is designed to maximise conversions. Features to look out for include mobile responsiveness, the ability to customise the look and feel to properly reflect your brand, easy multi-room bookings and integrations with conversion boosting technologies.

Finally, you should consider the user-friendliness of the technology and service. Does it require advanced tech or marketing skills? Can you manage your direct and indirect channels from a single place? What support is available if anything goes wrong?

A booking engine and direct booking solution that meets these criteria will save you hours, minimise drain on your resources and give you the ability to quickly optimise your complete distribution strategy.

Most importantly, is the provider you’re considering a leading brand that is well trusted within the industry? Award-winning providers like SiteMinder are often top of the pile for a reason, so you should give serious consideration to SiteMinder when making your purchase choice.

We believe the best online booking engine for your hotel is SiteMinder’s hotel booking engine. SiteMinder is used by 35,000+ hoteliers around the world and is consistently voted as a top provider at the HotelTechAwards.

SiteMinder combines sophisticated software with simple to learn and easy to master features, and a user friendly interface. SiteMinder is also trusted by so many accommodation providers because of its superior reliability, security, and global support.

If you are a smaller property, such as a B&B, consider using Little Hotelier’s all-in-one software. Little Hotelier is backed by SiteMinder’s world-leading technology.

When comparing booking engines, it’s important to choose a solution that aligns with your specific goals and the needs of your guests. Some considerations to take into account include:

• Your desired direct revenue and guest experience outcomes
• The level of sophistication you need from your solution
• Your integration requirements
• The amount of support and guidance you need

Compare booking engines by their ability to offer a seamless booking experience for guests, and a complete direct revenue package for your hotel. You should be able to easily accept direct bookings from all guest types and devices, personalise the guest experience, and win long term loyalty for your brand.

Ask questions like:

• Does this booking engine allow me to maintain my brand identity?
• Does it maximise my booking potential with the option to include last minute deals and promotions?
• Does it reduce friction by allowing guests to complete their reservation and payment within a few clicks?
• Does it facilitate guest loyalty and relationships with personalised guest communications?
• How easy is the technology to use and manage and what support is available to me in case I have any questions or need help?

The cost will vary depending on the circumstances of your property. However, a booking engine quickly offsets its cost with the extra direct bookings that come in and the time it saves you each day.

With SiteMinder, you’ll have a fixed monthly cost based on your number of rooms and the huge benefit of managing your direct and indirect distribution from a single place. Plus, you’ll benefit from value-adds such as rate parity insights, seamless website integration and access to conversion boosting plug-in apps.

You can get a free period of SiteMinder’s booking engine while you explore the features and suitability for your hotel. With a free 14-day trial, you’ll be able to understand the value that a hotel booking engine offers your business.

Once your free period is over you can choose to invest knowing your return on investment will be much greater than your monthly fee, or you can cancel anytime with no questions asked. When you sign-up with SiteMinder, there is no credit card required and no lock-in contracts. Click here to get started today!