If a hotel website is its shop window, then the booking engine is its primary sales tool. While guest impression starts at the outset of the traveler journey – exceptional service starts at the booking stage. Booking engines now have to be as responsive as the websites they integrate with – in terms of display, functionality and performance – working perfectly on any device and in any browser. Added functionality enables a hotel to cross sell and upsell products through promotional pricing, dynamic packaging and other add-ons as well as via individual website pages.
Through the GDS a hotel is connected to over 650,000 travel agents through Sabre, Amadeus, Galileo and Worldspan (Travelport) as well as the Pegasus Internet Distribution System (IDS). As well as access to those major booking channels, it provides analytical data to measure the impact of higher exposure levels. Sabre research shows that hotels in the top third of hotel availability displays get selected by agents nearly 60% of the time, regardless of any qualifiers that may be used to search.
At the heart of Nexus is a versatile and robust database that stores hotel property and rate data, client information, contract terms, sales activities and plans, meetings, calendar commitments, production data and everything else required to manage a sales operation. It supports GBTA and 30 unique Consortia formats— that’s over 1,000 pieces of data per hotel! Populated appropriately prior to the RFP season, it will enable a hotel to respond to a Corporate or Consortia contract bid in the space of 5 minutes!
Globres can assist a hotel in choosing the most effective platforms and help to develop the right approach. Globres has a great toolbox to work with in terms of Booking Buttons for Facebook pages and widgets, icons and feeds for hotel website pages – solutions that work to turn lookers into bookers.
It is quite a unique juxtaposition. For a hotel, OTA bookings are deemed expensive in CPA terms (cost per acquisition) given commission and parity demands that have to be met. In today’s competitive market place, a hotel needs to strike a sensible balance between its level of OTA and direct, commission-free bookings. Attuned already to these requirements and in anticipation of future market changes, Globres has developed solutions that enable a hotel to keep a profitable foot in both OTA and Direct channels.