Travelers are looking for a simple, smooth and secure experience that encourages them to book. It is, therefore, essential to have an optimized and intuitive online hotel booking engine, if you want to generate direct bookings via your website. Whether a travel business or an agent, how do you choose the best online booking engine?
In this blog, we highlight why you need it and the top 6 hotel booking engines for 2021.
What is an online hotel booking engine?
An online booking engine is a set of technical solutions that will allow a user to book their stay on the website of a hotel.
This software suite will act as an intermediary between the hotelier and the client. It will help in the automation of tasks such as management of availability of rooms, online payment, recovery of client data (and therefore the creation of a client file), confirmation with the client and more.
As a hotelier or an agent, this type of tool will facilitate the direct marketing of your rooms easier.
Why do you need a hotel booking engine?
To detach from middlemen and OTAs
The pressure from online travel agencies (OTA) has increased in recent years on independent hotels. Even if you are forced to do with these behemoths, it is necessary to regain your commercial independence.
Choosing an online booking system to develop direct sales is the first step to get rid of the middlemen. It is then up to you to be imaginative with your means and tools whether you choose a customized or white label booking engine.
For example, do not offer some special value-added services to your travelers on large platforms. Make them understand that it is by booking directly that they can avail of these additional facilities.
Better customer relationship management (CRM)
OTAs make every effort to ensure that you cannot establish a link with travelers, in other words…YOUR customers. Using a tool on your own website will allow you to re-establish this link. You collect information about your visitors and you build up a real customer file. This can be utilized to build loyalty and brand through promotions.
If you don’t know how to do it, we can help you.
Finding the best booking engine for your business
The market for online booking engines for hotels is very competitive. Each booking engine has its specificities, its advantages but also its disadvantages.
So how do you find your way around? How can you be sure you are making the right choice?
Here is a list of criteria to study carefully before making your decision.
Scalability: Remember to ask service providers what are the development tasks for their tool. You can, for example, ask what are the upcoming features or the development roadmap. You won’t get it every time, but it’s worth a try.
Top 6 hotel booking engines for 2020
Bookassist: This hotel booking engine provides hotels with both technology and strategic plan to lower costs and increase direct business. They also help build the brand online and drive direct bookings seamlessly
Net Affinity: A perfect blend of cutting edge conversion optimization technology and a user-friendly booking engine. Net Affinity is our second choice in this category of best hotel booking engines for 2020.
TravelClick: This booking engine offers you complete control on cost and budget with its Managing tool. Their affordable solution provides insights to attract the right kind of customers.
D-Edge: This one is the World’s 3rd best hotel distribution technology provider. The technical excellence ensures you drive maximum sales to spike your revenues and gain a competitive edge.
Guest Centric: As the name suggests, they offer groundbreaking customer journey management through their online booking engines.
Siteminder: One of the commission-free online booking engines, Siteminder provides secure payment gateway integration and also the possibility of taking the bookings from your Facebook page.
Are you still confused about which option will work best for you? We, at EZtoFlow, have that covered. With almost a decade of experience in travel portal software development, we know exactly how to develop the best booking engine for your business.
