Boooking Engine and Website
Real Space provides the following features in the hotel booking engine that makes it extremely useful for hotels:
The best part of Real Space booking engine is the simple clutter-free user interface, which can help a guest complete a booking within few seconds of coming on the site.
Real Space booking engine can be easily used for retargeting / remarketing activities, by providing the google tag manager ID or facebook pixel IDs, so that every browse can be recorded for performance marketing.
Since Real Space booking engine can be easily used along with channel manager and revenue management system, the rates on booking engine can be adjusted with respect to OTA rates by keeping them slightly higher or lower, depending on business strategy and rate parity guidelines.
Real Space booking engine can be easily integrated with built-in one click website, or can be integrated with other hotel websites in an easy and usable manner to provide independent hotels a ready to use website immediately.
The Real Space booking engine can allow users to setup various booking engine coupons (discounts) that can be applicable for the following uses: – Applicable only for minimum or maximum length of stay – Applicable for minimum advance purchase case only – Can be blocked for black-out dates – Advance payment can be made mandatory for use of certain coupons – Can be applicable to certain rateplans only – Can be created for the entire group / chain hotels – Can automatically on checkout as default applicability – Can automatically reduce the display the price
Real Space booking engine can be easily whitelabeled to show the hotel / group URL link rather than the Real Space booking link to give a uniform and consistent user experience to the booker.
Real Space provides easy user interface that allows hotel owners to upload their own room photos, along with room / rate plan amenities and any number of policies that are displayed easily on the booking engine
A hotel booking engine is a consumer facing direct booking channel through which a hotel can get direct bookings from the hotel website and save OTA commissions. A hotel booking engine is typically integrated with hotel channel manager and revenue management system to ensure there is real-time flow of rates, inventory and bookings between the 2 systems.
Hotel channel manager should be connected to booking engine used in the hotel keeping the following points in mind:
- Rates, inventory, and reservations should be integrated with booking engine in same manner as other OTAs. - There should be ability to provide special discounts, promotions, coupons on the booking engine to incentivize guest to book directly with hotel. - Integration of payment gateway so payment details can be sent to channel manager and to the property management system
Hotels can either use 3rd party systems to manage their accounting requirements, or use in house integrated accounting module to cater to the above needs.
The hotel booking engine is the most important channel to drive direct business to hotel through online channels. The following strategies are most relevant when using a booking engine to get direct bookings:
Google Free links is a special product in Google Hotel Centre that is started by google to assist hotels to list their booking engines / Landing pages directly on google so they can be discovered by bookers / customers.
Google Free links is supported by few selected booking engines and Real Space is one of them. When any hotel registers for Real Space Booking Engine, the booking engine is automatically linked to Google Hotel Centre within a few days. Once the booking engine is linked to google, then the rates and inventory that is pushed to booking engine is also visible on Google My Business page, similar to the below screenshot.
Google Free links is the most useful tool for any hotel to increase their direct business, as they can ensure that booking engine prices are lower than other OTAs and the customer can easily see which link is the direct booking link for the hotel.
Google Hotel Ads is the add-on marketing product from Google where any hotel that uses the Google Free Links / Hotel Centre integration to further increase direct bookings by running additional campaigns on Google Hotel Ads. For Google Hotel Ads to work, the hotel needs to have a booking engine that is integrated with Google Hotel Centre (Google Free links).
There are two types of campaigns that can run on Google Hotel Ads, either booking link campaigns where the conversions are measured, or the display campaigns, where the hotel prices are shown on other Google Products like search, display, etc.
The Booking Link goal is the most effective way to utilise Google Hotel Ads, because google shows the price of booking engine above the other OTAs, and if the price of a hotel is attractive, then the customer is easily attracted to the booking engine and can lead to higher conversions / business.
The screenshot below clearly shows the above link (of Official Hotel website) is from Google Hotel Ads and the below link is from Google Free Links.