5 reasons to have Hotel Metasearch Engine Listing
Hotel Metasearch Engine listing is one of the best possible ways to gain more direct bookings for Hotels. Metasearch Engines are the essentials tools for the hotel in the fight against the OTAs.
Metasearch engines create an impartial and transparent marketplace for the hotel inventories where the travellers can meet the distributors.
Wikipedia defines Metasearch Engines as
A metasearch engine (or aggregator) is a search tool that uses another search engine’s data to produce its own results from the Internet. Metasearch engines take input from a user and simultaneously send out queries to third party search engines for results. Sufficient data is gathered, formatted by their ranks and presented to the users.
So let us check out some of the top reasons why metasearch engines listings are important for Hotels.
Lesser Cost Per Booking
Bookings channelled from the OTAs costs a high commission from the Hotels and leaves a less margin for the hotels. The amount a hotelier has to spend is much lesser in the PPC model acquired by Metasearch Engines than the commission he pays to OTAs.
OTAs are charging as much as 25 to 30% of the booking amount while on metasearch engines it is approx 10 to 15%. So clearly an increased margin for the hotels.
PPC
The Metasearch Engines work on the concept of Cost per Click. So there is no heavy commission involved in the listing.
The hotels will have to only pay for genuine traffic directing to their website. This saves a lot of resources for the hoteliers. So if you are a small independent hotel then it is a boon for you.
But for the better results, you will have to optimize your PPC campaigns in such a way that you extract the most out of it.
You will have to be very careful while bidding for a keyword. The keyword should be relevant enough so that you have a higher conversion rate.
Direct and Instant Booking
When a customer search for a hotel on one of such platform then he generally clicks on those listing in which he is interested.
In the whole list of hotels, the traveller can see the rate, hotel details and pictures so he clicks on the hotel listing which attracts him the most.
This means that the hotelier has a serious potential lead which can be converted easily. Now there can be two scenarios possible. Either the customer is directed to the hotel website giving the hotel a direct booking or the metasearch engine platform gives the customer the interface to make the booking that is instant booking.
Metasearch Engines like Google and Tripadvisor provide such interface to the customers where he can make the booking without leaving the page.
Good for your Online Presence
Metasearch engines are very useful in making your online reputation. These days online reviews massively impact the buying decisions of 70% of customers.
As these reviews reflect honest feelings. Through reviews, customers express their happiness and some leash out with anger, disappointment or frustration. And that is why customers like to read reviews before making reviews.
Metasearch engines allow you to take online reviews and make a community for your hotel. This will motivate travellers to buy from you.
But for that, you will have to ensure that you are providing the best stay experience in your hotel.
Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic Pricing has become compulsory for a successful hotel business. The always-connected traveller wants the real-time inventory update. And due to this, hotels can lose bookings to more technically sound competitors like OTAs and other Hotels.
Metasearch Engines can update the rate and inventory within seconds if a hotelier wants.
But for this, the hotelier has to take the support of technology. A hotel reservation system like QloApps and a channel manager is a must to take your hotel business to its paramount.
Conclusion
It is quite clear that the time has come for the hoteliers to embrace metasearch engines. There are many advantages of metasearch engines. Metasearch engines are capable of bringing an influx of bookings to the hotel.
This will be very beneficial for the revenue generation for the hotel.
We aspire to serve the hotel industry with our product QloApps and that process we have taken a step forward by launching the QloApps Forum. So please raise any of your issue on our Forum.
For any kind of technical assistance, just raise a ticket.