Step Three of the Five Steps of a Guest Booking Process

Okay, it’s time. Step numero 3!
Once again, are talking about the five steps of a guests booking process: the physiological route they take before deciding on where to spend their money.
In the last two posts, I covered PLAN and RESEARCH. If you haven’t read them yet, I recommend reading them prior to this post so you can get caught up to speed. If you’ve already done so, read on.
Step 3: DECIDE
DECIDE is where the guest has narrowed down their choice to maybe one or two properties. They’ll have two tabs open on their browser or saved in their favourites on an OTA.
It could be that they are sat looking at your property, hovering over the “Book Now” button.
(CLICK IT, PLEASE, CLICK IT!)

What makes them click BOOK?
& what makes them not?
Read on to answer these questions.
At this step of the guest booking process, the potential customer should be 80% ready to DECIDE in your favor, if you’ve done the first two steps right.
Usually, there are two or three other properties in the mix that the potential guest is deciding between.
Your USP needs to shine!
This is where your Unique Selling Point (USP) is critical to boast!
A USP is what you do, better than anyone else.
Some examples are:
* The views from your property,
* The fantastic customer service,
* The food,
* The price,
* The amenities,
* Money-off vouchers,
* Free welcome drink
* Afternoon Tea
* A Gift: Fancy Toiletries, Chocolate Box, Wine

Whatever it is you do best has to be clear to the potential guest.
How do you present this to a guest?
On your website, it’s easy.
The Power of Pop-ups
You can use a pop-up ad to appear on your site, and more importantly on the hotel accommodation page. Pop-ups are annoying, yes, but they work!
Pop-ups purpose is to interpret and capture attention. Combine this with an added value offer and you are on to a winner!
You can time pop up ads now to exactly the point you need to get the guests attention.
* when they scroll down to a particular part of your page
* when they were just about to hit on the “exit” box
* when they have been on your page for a certain amount of time
Let’s look at the last one.
If someone has spent a good minute on your hotel accommodation page, you know they have a good interest in staying with you. If they spend more than two minutes, it means they are looking for more, something that will help push them over the edge to hit the book button.
Say a pop up was to appear at minute two, (for e.g.) with a beautiful reminder of your free welcome drink or money off voucher in your restaurant, it just gives that person the little extra encouragement they need to go ahead and book with you.
Pop up adverts are easy to setup. My recommendation is to check out SumoMe, (Google them) they provide stunning templates and have the best customer service team on hand to help.
What if the guest isn’t on your website and is instead looking at your property on an OTA, like Booking.com.
Well, make sure you are taking full advantage of all the features these OTAs offer you.
Booking. com features a VIP product called “Genius Benefits.” Any member of Booking.com gets extra benefits at properties. Make sure you check this out because you can offer these features to their members and in return, you’ll appear higher in the search ranking AND will make sure your USP is visible to more people.
I wrote more about how to get more about of Booking.com, here
In conclusion
Step 3 is an important part of the booking process, if you mess this up, then you lose the reservation.
If you get a lot of people on your accommodation section on your website, but not a lot of bookings, then this is why.
Crack this and you will increase your direct bookings.
Next, is all about the BOOKING section and why the OTAs are so good at this.
