Hotel websites, direct bookings and guest systems
A guest finds you on a travel site, books, stays, likes it, and books through the same travel site next year. You paid a commission on both, on a person who at some point stopped being a stranger and became a regular.
Everyone in this business knows what that percentage is. Almost nobody has a way of asking, at the right moment, in a way that makes booking direct the obvious thing to do — because the right moment is three weeks after they got home, and nobody is at a desk three weeks after anything.
The second stay is the one worth owning. It is also the only one you can still do something about.
You have someone on the desk. That is why nobody sees the problem.
A restaurant at service has nobody free, and everyone accepts it. You have somebody standing right there — and they are checking a family of four in, and the phone is ringing, and the enquiry that came in through the website at 21:40 is going to be answered tomorrow either way.
The staffing is exactly what hides it. Nobody looks at a manned front desk and concludes that enquiries are going unanswered, so nobody counts them, so nobody knows how many there were.
An answer at 21:41 with the right dates and a real price is not a better version of tomorrow’s answer. It is the difference between a booking and somebody else’s booking.
Before, during and after are three different conversations.
Before is directions, parking, what time the kitchen closes and whether the dog can come. During is the thing they wish they had asked at check-in and will not ring down for. After is the only one that decides whether there is a next time, and it is the one that never happens.
None of those is difficult. All three are simply somebody remembering, at a specific hour, for every guest, forever — which is precisely the kind of work that stops happening the week you get busy.
A guest who has been remembered once behaves like a regular. That is the whole of it, and it costs nothing to be true.
What actually changes, in the order it matters to you.
- Orders arrive without anyone writing them down.
- Every customer hears from you at the right moment, and nobody sends one by hand.
- Someone who left without buying gets a reason to come back.
- A customer's history is remembered forever, so nobody re-explains anything.
- The follow-up that always gets forgotten, never gets forgotten.
- Money's collected, receipts go out, and nothing gets chased.
- Your ads point at your street, not your country.
- Pages get written for the things people are actually searching for.
- Everything about every customer sits in one place, and it's yours.
- There's one number that tells you whether it's working.
The audit will tell you what someone finds when they search for a place to stay in your town and land on you rather than on a travel site.
Questions people ask
- How do we get a returning guest to book direct instead of through a travel site?
- The follow-up that always gets forgotten, never gets forgotten — including the one three weeks after they got home, which is the right moment and the moment nobody is at a desk. The second stay is the one worth owning.
- We have someone on the front desk. Why would enquiries go unanswered?
- Because they are checking a family of four in while the phone is ringing, and the enquiry that came in through the website at 21:40 gets answered tomorrow either way. The staffing is exactly what hides it.
- What difference does answering that night actually make?
- An answer at 21:41 with the right dates and a real price is not a better version of tomorrow’s answer. It is the difference between a booking and somebody else’s booking.
- What should a guest hear before, during and after a stay?
- Before is directions, parking, what time the kitchen closes and whether the dog can come; during is the thing they wish they had asked at check-in; after is the one that decides whether there is a next time. Every customer hears from you at the right moment, and nobody sends one by hand.
- Does a returning guest have to explain themselves all over again?
- No. A customer’s history is remembered forever, so nobody re-explains anything, and a guest who has been remembered once behaves like a regular.
- How would I know whether any of this is working?
- There’s one number that tells you whether it’s working.
Want to talk through how this would fit your business? Message on WhatsApp, or send a message and it reaches the person who would do the work.