What should you be getting from your hotel booking engine provider? Which features are most important to your hotel, and which can you live without? From our perspective, your hotel booking engine provider should be giving you a highly flexible, fully controllable, feature-rich solution, along with in-depth reporting and a team to support you.

1. 11 THINGS TO LOOK
FOR IN A
HOTEL BOOKING
ENGINE PROVIDER

2. WHAT SHOULD YOU BE
GETTING FROM YOUR
HOTEL BOOKING ENGINE
PROVIDER?

3. Your hotel booking engine
provider should be giving you a
highly flexible, fully controllable,
feature-rich solution, along with
in-depth reporting and a team to
support you.

4. WHY IS A
BOOKING ENGINE
PROVIDER
IMPORTANT?

5. A good booking engine provider
adds value in several ways.
It aids you in:
- Brand promotion
- Lower costs than other online channels
- Increasing the lifetime value of the guest
- Retaining the loyalty of the guest

6. How do you choose a good provider?
Make a list of the features and
functionality that are most important to
your hotel, so you know what you’re
looking for as you do your research.
We’ve listed 11 of the most important
things to look for in a hotel booking
engine provider to get you started.
Let's dive in.

7.
A R E T H E Y
C O N N E C T E D T O
T H E C H A N N E L S
Y O U R H O T E L I S
O N ?

8. As important as your website is, it’s only one
of your digital channels.
To centralize your online strategy, it’s vital
to manage your inventory in one place.

9. However, at other times, what guests
perceive as the value can be more important:
uniqueness can trump price.
For example, if demand is high for the city
because a concert is in town, the price can be
secondary. If your hotel is a luxury property,
the guest’s decision will be more about the
product than the price.

10. We also offer integrations with a number of
channel managers and PMS systems, for a
seamless transition.
N E T A F F I N I T Y W O R K S
W I T H A L L M A J O R
C H A N N E L M A N A G E R S

11. When you can see your availability and rates
in the same place, you can hone your rate
strategy and easily see how channels are
performing.
A C T I O N P O I N T

12.
D O T H E Y H A V E A
M O B I L E
S O L U T I O N ?

13. As of Q3 2016, mobile contributed
53% of total website visits across all
Net Affinity hotel clients.
If your booking engine doesn’t work
on mobile, or doesn’t work well on
mobile, you’re losing bookings.

14. Your hotel booking engine provider
should offer you a booking engine
that’s customized for every device.
Most people use mobile and desktop
devices quite differently. So, your
booking engine needs to account for
those differences. Ideally, the booking
experience on mobile should be
simplified as much as possible.

15. Can you tell how your booking engine is
performing on mobile? You should be able to
see your performance on mobile separately
from your performance on other devices, so
you can hone your mobile strategy with
accurate data.
A C T I O N P O I N T

16. I S T H E I R
B O O K I N G E N G I N E
F L E X I B L E
E N O U G H ?

17. Does your booking engine’s admin system
give your hotel the features it needs to
succeed? Does it:
- Display all the languages that your guests
speak
- Prominently display your hotel’s logo
- Offer unlimited creation of tariffs, room
types, special offers and discounts
- Provide online voucher redemption
- Offer wedding and corporate booking
modules
- Show a pooled inventory

18. To figure out exactly what features your
booking engine needs, consider your guests.
Where do they come from? Do you see success
with voucher sales?
When you know who you want to book, you
have a much better chance of succeeding. Your
booking engine should offer you a flexible
admin system to fulfil your guests’ needs.
A C T I O N P O I N T

19. W H A T K I N D O F
R E P O R T I N G D O
T H E Y O F F E R
T H E I R C L I E N T S ?

20. Your booking engine provider should be
open with you about your hotel’s
performance. Their team should offer advice
for improvement based on best practices and
data.
What kind of reporting does your booking
engine provider offer you? Are they
transparent, in-depth, and do they give you
full insights into your hotel’s performance?

21. Your team might offer:
- Gift voucher campaigns your hotel can run
- Ways to emphasize the perks of booking
direct
- Advice for creating rate plans that convert
large numbers of guests
These are the tip of the iceberg. When it
comes to communications between you and
your booking engine provider, make sure you
have an open and productive exchange of
information and ideas.

22. For the best suggestions to improve, seek an
account manager with your booking engine
provider who has extensive hospitality
experience – they’ll know what challenges
you’re facing and have the expertise to help.
A good team is an invaluable tool in
improving your direct bookings.
A C T I O N P O I N T

23.
H O W D O T H E Y
P R O M O T E A
' B O O K D I R E C T '
M E S S A G E ?

24. Direct bookings, properly handled, typically
come with a much lower Cost Per Acquisition
than third party websites like OTAs.
This is true even when you account for
marketing costs. Growing your direct
bookings means growing your revenue.

25. There are a large variety of tactics that can
improve your Book Direct Strategy. A few of
these are providing a clear, compelling reason
to book direct to your guests, a best rate
guarantee if you’re able, and managing your
rate strategy correctly on your online
channels.
A C T I O N P O I N T

26. D O T H E Y O F F E R
A D D I T I O N A L
S E R V I C E S T O D R I V E
B O O K I N G S ?

27. Often, an experienced, full-
service booking engine provider
can provide to your hotel with
more than just a booking engine.

28. Digital marketing services can drive high
volume, high quality traffic to your website
and through your booking engine.
Web design is also key. If your website has
been designed to be both visually impressive
and with conversion principles in mind, it will
be much more successful at driving bookings
than a generic, run of the mill hotel website.

29. D O T H E Y H A V E A N
E X P E R T
U N D E R S T A N D I N G O F
W H A T D R I V E S
C O N V E R S I O N S ?

30. Is your hotel website’s booking engine
built to persuade guests to book? The
science of conversion rate optimisation, or
CRO, shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Done correctly, CRO matters because it
makes your hotel more money. That
revenue then allows you to grow your
brand and get more exposure while
keeping your hotel full and your ADR high.

31. At Net Affinity, we follow best
practices and track user behaviour to
make certain that our booking engine
works for your guests.
We have a Conversion Team who are
one hundred percent dedicated to
testing our booking engine, tracking
how users move through it, and
constantly making improvements.

32. You can think of CRO as a set of guidelines for
success, which must be refined for the industry
and the market.
Your booking engine should be constantly
improving, and dedicated to:
- Finding out where and why users aren’t booking
- Fixing it
A C T I O N P O I N T

33. A R E T H E Y
C O N S T A N T L Y
P R E P A R I N G F O R
T H E F U T U R E ?

34. As hoteliers, you’re fully aware that
it’s not enough to be ready for ‘now’.
You should be looking 6 months or a
year down the road at a minimum to
truly call yourself prepared!

35. Your booking engine provider should
be right there with you.
They should be developing new
features for their booking engine to
cope with the changing landscape –
and to prepare for the future. Does
your booking engine regularly release
updates or new versions?

36. Mobile bookings are becoming a
much more important part of the
picture.
Ensure that your booking engine
provider has a solution that works
for your mobile bookings.
A C T I O N P O I N T

37. A R E T H E Y
E X P E R T S I N
H O S P I T A L I T Y &
T E C H N O L O G Y ?

38. Online booking engines exist at the
crossroads of traditional hospitality and
tech – your booking engine provider’s team
should have both on their minds!
The best software developers in the world
still need product designers that know the
industry. At Net Affinity, we pride ourselves
on hiring from the hospitality industry and
the technology sector.

39. Our conversion team and leaders
all have hospitality experience,
and we have experience working
with every kind of hotel. Our
experience, along with our data,
allows us to create a booking
engine that’s for hoteliers – not
just in theory, but in practice.

40. Your account manager and point of contact
with your provider should be passionate and
want your business to succeed.
At Net Affinity, our Account Managers have
over 60 years combined hotel experience,
making them extremely qualified to give your
hotel advice on the best ways to drive direct
bookings.
A C T I O N P O I N T

41. D O E S I T H E L P
Y O U B U I L D G U E S T
R E L A T I O N S H I P S ?

42. The ideal booking engine allows you the
flexibility to create unlimited tariffs and
rate plans, and separate rates for guests
booking corporate events or weddings.
Once those flexible features have helped you
persuade guests to book, are they helping
you build a long term relationship with that
guest? The better the guest gets to know
you, the more likely they are to stay again in
future.

43. Net Affinity’s booking engine provides
opportunities outside of the booking
process for you to communicate with
your guests.
For example, you can send automated
pre-stay emails with information
about the guest’s stay several days
before arrival. Similarly, post-stay
emails can include an invitation for
guests to review their stay.

44. W H A T R A N G E O F
C L I E N T T Y P E S D O
T H E Y H A V E ?

45. Is their booking engine suitable for
your property? While in theory a good
booking engine is flexible and scalable
for different property types, take a
look at their client portfolio.
If they only cater to country
guesthouses, consider looking
elsewhere for your large city centre
property.

46. On the other hand, if they have an
extensive client list across a range of
different property types, or they
specialize in your type of property,
have no fear!
If your hotel has a focus on a certain
type of bookings, like large corporate
groups or weddings, consider asking
how their booking engine can cater to
those needs.

47. Seek out a booking engine provider
that’s the whole package – booking
engine, marketing and design.
It’s an all-in-one solution that means
you have one point of contact with one
team taking care of everything.

48. A good booking engine is
absolutely vital to your
hotel’s online success.
Is yours helping you succeed?

49. A T N E T A F F I N I T Y , W E ' R E E X P E R T S I N
H O T E L T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C O N V E R S I O N
R A T E G R O W T H F O R H O T E L S . I F Y O U ' V E G O T
Q U E S T I O N S , E M A I L U S A T
S A L E S @ N E T A F F I N I T Y . C O M
T H A N K Y O U !