Online Hotel Booking: How Hotels in India Can Leverage this?

With the rising importance of internet, hotels in India have been witnessing a steady growth in online hotel booking pattern. According to a recent survey by global research agency Millward Brown, around 25% of hotel bookings are done online. While 18% of the same gets facilitated by OTAs, a hotel’s brand website accounts for the rest 7%.

The above mentioned finding indicates two major factors on how hotels in India can sell their rooms online. First, they need to be connected to OTAs and secondly, they need to attract more guests via their brand/proprietary websites.

Today, OTAs help hotels grow visibility and exposure on various sales channels. Through this arrangement, it becomes easier for a hotel to reach out to a vast number of targeted audiences who book rooms online. To help hotels better manage this whole process, IDS Next has integrated a smart Channel Management Solution into its hotel software.

The integration of channel manager solution with our Hotel PMS/ Hotel Management Software ensures that hotel inventory is displayed real-time on various distribution channels. This eliminates errors and helps a hotel capitalize on booking potential. Hotel channel manager software also helps hotel staff reduce work, manage rate parity and maintain an impressive online presence across a growing list of channels. With this, hotels can publish rates and room availability on several channels with just the click of a single button and they can even have the privilege of giving more availability to the best-selling channel.

Now let’s take a look at the importance of a hotel’s brand website in terms of generating direct bookings. A hotels’ website should be considered as the most important communication channel. A hotel must ensure that its website is attractive, user friendly and has updated information that a potential buyer may look for. Overall, it should have everything to compel a visitor book his stay.

In this case, hotels can consider adopting IDS Next’s Web Booking Engine solution. The web booking engine interfaced with IDS Next’s Hotel Property Management System helps hotels leverage their websites to witness increased direct booking and enhanced room occupancy. It allows potential guests to view availability of rooms real-time to make booking directly. A guest would even receive instant confirmation against the booking directly from the channel. This whole process is error free and most importantly, helps a hotel to accept bookings for as much as a year in advance.