In today’s innovating era, where people are facilitated with ample of disposable income, leisure travel has been growing with wild pace of technological advancements.  Unlike past years, now people are willing to spend on travelling. Hence choosing a hotel for your planned vacation has become a task on tips but need consumer rationality.

They want to interact with people from different cultures with greater ease, as everyday the globe had been shrinking into a village and travelling is just like visiting the corridor next to our base location.

To plan a hassle free vacation we need to take into consideration many parameters like mode of transportation, time of travel, activities, budget and ones accommodation at the place of visit. While planning a vacation, forty percent of budget goes into mode of transportation while accommodation costs around thirty percent of one’s travelling budget, so it’s very important to choose the accommodation or the hotel wisely.

The hotel industry has witnessed enormous growth in the past two decades and most of the credit for this achievement goes to effective utilisation of power of internet. Millions of properties all over the world are nowadays offering the facility of online bookings/reservations to their guests. In fact, online reservations have become a norm as travellers find it much easier to book hotels/rooms of their choice from the convenience of four walls of their homes. There are two basic ways in which one can make an online booking – booking direct with hotels and booking with Online Travel Agencies (OTAs).

A relaxing and hassle free vacation calls for a comfortable hotel within the budget. Online travel agencies (OTAs) have the resources and ability to provide their clients a wide range of lodging options, thus enabling them to make an informed decision after doing price and facilities comparison among various hotels. Some of the popular OTAs are Travelocity, MakeMyTrip, Expedia, Thomas Cook etc. OTAs can also provide hotel/room pictures to their clients, besides other details like best deals, prices and guest reviews. All these details make it a lot easier for travellers to select the best hotel for their needs.

Although OTAs are quite popular in the travel market, one cannot overlook the benefits associated with making direct bookings at hotel websites. Direct hotel bookings are more popular with loyal, frequent, unman-aged and leisure business travellers who focus more on the convenience and schedule adherence during their travel.

A large number of hotels nowadays have their own websites which have online reservation software incorporated into them, enabling people to reserve rooms in real time. With the help of such facility, hoteliers too can market their properties directly to the guests in a far better manner.  Also while searching a hotel online, many hotels made you to fill a form regarding your food choices and other preferences related to ones room, this ways on arriving at your hotel you are greeted in a much prepared way which includes room kept as per your choice and food prepared as per your liking. This is a great advantage of online booking your hotel

Even more convenient option available down the road is advent of hotel search engine, which provides the price of a single room available at different websites and allows you to compare the price, this way one can compare and go for the lowest price for the hotel room. Most popular hotel search engines are Trivago, Tripadvisor , cleartrip , hotelscombined etc.

Following are some advantages associated with direct online hotel bookings – 

Hotels can increase their profits by doing away with 20% – 30% fee normally charged by third party intermediaries. They can even pass on this margin to guests, thereby increasing guest loyalty.

Room rates can be controlled better and reservations can be increased directly from own website

Customer experience can be better managed by following their shopping and reservation patterns. Customer satisfaction can also be increased by following up on their online feed backs and acting upon their suggestions.

Customers can be provided various options and incentives (including freebies at gyms, restaurants, spas and other facilities) while making online bookings.

Guests can be provided a virtual tour of the hotel on the hotel website, thereby giving them a better idea about the actual property.

Since the guests will have a firsthand copy of the booking acknowledgement, there is no possibility of foul play at the intermediary level, especially at peak season times.

And finally an important reason why a large majority of travelers are nowadays making reservations online is because many hotels have improved the quality of their websites significantly. The new age hotel websites have better design and navigation some of them even have virtual tours of property available on them.

 

By Graces & Wishes Jsssdn 🙂