6 Reasons You Need a Hotel Booking Engine for a Website (2023)

A hotel booking engine is a non-negotiable for hoteliers in 2023. The online landscape has become cluttered with multiple purchase channels for travelers. So much so that it can be overwhelming for travelers to navigate booking online.

Investing in your own hotel booking engine for a website puts the ball back in your court. Consumers like to feel taken care of and that they can trust your brand. By offering direct bookings on your website, you’re offering them the best guest journey.

Hoteliers have more tools at their disposal than ever before. With new technology like front-end website builders and hotel channel managers – the opportunities are limitless. We’ll dive into more on these tools shortly.

So, if you’re a hotelier looking to maximize your direct bookings and revenue – read on! We will jump into what a hotel booking engine is and six reasons why you should invest in one.

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What Is a Hotel Booking Engine for a Website?

A hotel booking engine for a website is a tool that allows travelers to book a room directly on your hotel’s website. A good hotel booking engine should provide a smooth booking experience for your potential guests.

Your booking engine should also allow you to process bookings securely online. This means there is no additional risk in using your booking engine. If your booking engine is built with a trustworthy SaaS company, you can enjoy peace of mind.

What is the best hotel website booking engine? Or which software is best for hotel booking? The best booking engine for a hotel website would be choosing software that provides a commission-free booking engine – like RoomRaccoon. With no hidden fees and an effortless setup, an integrated property management system is the way to go.

The 6 Benefits of a Hotel Booking Engine

1) Capitalize

One of the main benefits of a hotel booking engine is capitalizing on revenue. By using a direct booking channel, your hotel saves on commission costs. As well as booking fees, with no income being absorbed by OTAs.

While a small surcharge may seem insignificant, the commission costs will add up over time. And who would say no to more revenue? With no middle-man intercepting guests’ booking journeys, all the profit goes into your pocket.

A hotel booking engine also maximizes the return on investment on owned media. Owned media is any channel your brand controls and holds – such as your website.

A hotel website not only represents the brand – but it also presents a marketing opportunity. When you set up your booking engine with RoomRaccoon, you have ample opportunity to customize your owned media. We’ll delve into the benefits of customization next up.

2) Customize

As previously mentioned, the digital space is cluttered. Everyday digital browsing is littered with pay-per-click ads, influencer advertising, affiliate marketing, display ads, and more.

So how can property owners stand out? Customization! Potential guests want to feel understood and special. In a digital space overburdened with generic messages and offers – tailored content stands out. And the best part is customization is more accessible now than ever before.

Traditionally, you’d need a website developer and perhaps a designer to design your property’s booking engine. With RoomRaccoon’s Booking Engine Set Up, you can easily tailor your branding, available languages, pre-payment, and discount codes.

If you want to take your booking engine one step further, you can use our white-label solution. By setting up your custom domain name, all your hotel communications will no longer contain RoomRaccoon and will only feature your brand for consistency and prestige.

3) Control

Having a dedicated space, such as a booking engine, where you control every aspect – is invaluable. As discussed, the design is up to you! You can add your brand colors, upload room photos, and add your logo.

Over and above that, you’ll have carte blanche over your pricing strategy. And this is where it pays to invest in an integrated PMS. With a PMS like RoomRaccoon, you can create a dynamic pricing strategy that connects directly to your booking engine.

Using our yield management tool, your rates will be automatically adjusted across all channels, including the booking engine. You can also control the visibility of custom discount codes. All these tools under your control give you the power to boost your direct bookings.

RoomRaccoon is passionate about empowering hoteliers, and our product team constantly innovates. If you’d like to stay updated with our newest features, please follow us on LinkedIn!

4) Create

One of the most exciting ways to get more from your booking engine is to create unique offers. There are many ways you can get creative with RoomRaccoon’s booking engine. You can create direct booking packages and special offers and include add-ons.

In terms of packages, you can create memorable experiences for your guests. Hotels can offer honeymoon packages, corporate travel bundles, or even retreats. Guests are more likely to purchase a package offer when they can see how much they save, which is possible with RoomRaccoon’s booking engine!

Special offers can also be created, such as custom discounts. To increase guest loyalty and brand sentiment, these discounts can be shown to returning website visitors. Seasonal discounts, like a winter offer, can also be added directly to the booking engine.

What’s great with a website booking engine is the customization of your add-ons. You can manage the content, descriptions, images, and pricing from the RoomRaccoon interface. This makes it easier than ever to tailor your add-ons to perfection and update them when needed.

5) Communicate

Another benefit of having your own hotel booking engine is the customer experience. Among the advantages of hotel management software having a dedicated booking engine allows for better guest communication. It also enhances the booking journey, simplifying and consolidating correspondence with guests.

You can also set up dedicated guest profiles with a fully integrated PMS. The bookers’ functionality enables you to save names, the company, country, phone numbers, and last check-in. Even better, you can add “additional booker information.”

The extra booker information can help tailor guest experiences. It also saves the details for returning bookings so guests do not have to input their preferences again. Next time “Mr. Wells” books your hotel, you’ll already know he is a vegetarian and is allergic to down feather pillows.

In the same way, you can use guest and booker information to tailor email communications. With your booking engine for a hotel website, you can easily send pre-stay and post-stay emails. Personalized emails will make the guests feel valued and reduce any miscommunication.

6) Capture

Capturing information from guests is effortless with a hotel booking engine. When guests book directly, your hotel can capture data on various helpful things. Your hotel can enable pre-payments, register payment methods securely and enable online payment gateways.

Pre-payments can be organized within the RoomRaccoon PMS. Simply edit your property’s rate type and add the percentage of the pre-payment you’d like to request. The pre-payments can be captured when guests book directly, and your hotel can reduce unattended bookings.

A good PMS should offer multiple secure payment methods. Online security is paramount as many consumers book vacation accommodation with credit card payments. RoomRaccoon offers 3D secure credit card payment to ensure guests are comfortable and payments are convenient.

Overall, a hotel management system empowers hoteliers with easy-to-access information and excellent management tools. Compliantly capturing and storing guest information improves communications and elevates the guest experience.

Invest in a Hotel Booking Engine

A hotel booking engine is invaluable in the new digital age. RoomRaccoon integrates with all the best online travel agencies for the utmost convenience and brand exposure. Hoteliers have the option and ability to advertise through OTAs and have their own direct booking engine.

If you’d like to get started on your booking engine strategy, we have a knowledge-packed blog on how to optimize your booking engine profitability. As a hotel software company built by hoteliers, we know the challenges of running and operating hotels. We want to make it easier for you!

If you’d like to take your hotel to the next level, please book a demo with one of our hospitality experts.

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