Step One of The Five Steps of a Guest Booking Process

Boostly
Boostly
Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read

Learn how to boost your bookings

There are 5 steps to the guest booking process. I’m going to walk you through each one, starting with Step 1: PLAN.

When you fully understand all five steps to the guest booking process, it will, in turn, help you understand how to increase your bookings. The OTAs understand these five steps and are taking bookings AWAY FROM YOU. Let me tell you about the first step in detail so you can start learning how to get those bookings back!

Ask yourself these questions:

How does a guest book a room at your property?

What physiological stages do they go through?

What makes them hit the “BOOK NOW” button and what makes them leave your website?

Learn how to boost your bookings

STEP 1: PLAN

This is where the guest booking process journey begins.

Where do you go when you want to find anything in this world? Nine out of ten times the answer is Google.

It’s no different for someone searching to book a stay in a hotel, guesthouse, or holiday cottage. A potential customer will start their search by:

A) Looking for options,

B) Or knowing exactly what they want.

Guests who know what they want

Let’s look at the latter first. If a potential guest knows they want to stay at your place, they go straight to your website.

Who is this customer? Well, it could be someone who has a friend or family member that has stayed at your place in the past.

This could be someone who has seen an influencer’s post on your property and now wants to experience it for themselves.

It could be someone who has seen an advert for your business in a magazine, newspaper, or online.

Converting these people to booking is easy, or it should be. That is where I come in and help you master all 5 stages of this process. Where a lot of properties fail is between stages 2–4, (but, we will cover that in future posts.)

In the past, I have failed at this. That is why testing what works and doesn’t work has helped me in the past to increase the bookings for my business and my clients.

I’m at a point in my career where I’ve learned exactly what works and what doesn’t so I can share these five steps with you. Hopefully, you can see the value and implement them into your business.

Guests looking at their options

Hollywood Tower in Hotel Theme park

The majority of new business bookings is the first option, the potential customer who is looking for options. People here usually fall under two categories.

  1. They are looking for something very vague, (I.e hotel in {insert town}
  2. They know what they want, but don’t know exactly where (I.e Pet-friendly accommodation with great views in {insert town}

How do you get seen by these people searching very vaguely on Google? it’s simple, get your property on the Online Travel Agents.

The OTA’s spend lots of money, millions upon millions, to make sure their websites come up on top of the Google search for these “short tail keyword searches.”

You can’t compete with the big boys for these potential customers, and instead, you need to get your business on there and win the booking. I have written about this in more detail here http://bit.ly/2o7xmxw.

If you want to appear in the “long tail keyword searches,” (I.e Pet-friendly accommodation in the centre of {insert town}) then you need to make sure your website contains said keywords.

You do this by:

• Having a blog on your website where you write about your key selling points,

• You “tag” all photos and images on your website with the key info. (To find out more about “photo tagging,” Google is your friend.)

You can also invite travel bloggers or influencers to come and stay at your property for free in exchange for a write-up or video about your business so that their content appears on the search too.

This is an important stage because PLAN is the beginning of the 5-step guest booking process, and if you do your marketing job right from the start, you will get your property seen and increase your bookings.

The following blog post is about step 2, which is RESEARCH!

Learn how to boost your bookings

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Boostly

Helping Hospitality Owners From All Over The World Increase Their Direct Bookings

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