A Guide to Creating a Hotel Booking App
Supercharging the Mobile Guest Experience to Enhance Customer Value and Drive Direct Bookings.
The digital transformation of the hotel industry in recent years has seen it become increasingly challenging for hotel brands to gain considerable market share. The emergence of online travel agents, price comparison websites, and sharing sites such as Airbnb have provided customers with a wealth of options, making it particularly difficult for hoteliers to obtain direct bookings and maintain customer loyalty. Creating an excellent experience for your guests can help hotel brands develop a positive relationship with their consumers and enhance customer value.
The Purpose of a Hotel App
The introduction of smartphones has provided individuals with endless possibilities, from managing their social media, searching for directions or booking a holiday, users can do just about anything from a single device.
“85% of travellers now use smartphones to plan and book their leisure trips, furthermore, travel apps rank the seventh most downloaded category in the world”. — Travelport Digital
The ease and accessibility of a hotel app allow many services associated with hotels to be brought to a single place and literally at a user’s fingertips. Mobile apps also provide greater advantages to guests which cannot be offered through a hotel’s website. Some hotel apps now allow guests to use their mobile to access their hotel rooms, check-in, order room service and even request extra pillows.
The purpose of a hotel app is to enhance the guest experience further than what is already offered on the website and at the hotel, to create a truly seamless experience.
This week on Medium, we discuss what to consider when creating a hotel app to supercharge the mobile guest experience and drive direct bookings.
Search Functionality
There are multiple elements to consider when designing and developing the search experience for your hotel app. To develop a successful search experience for your guests, it’s important to firstly determine the needs and wants of the user and the way they search. Data-driven research is critical to implement into your UX strategy to help identify how users are searching.
Auto-complete and auto-suggestions are great features to implement within the search, helping users to recall hotels based on the letter’s the user types into the search, saving them time and reducing inaccuracies if the user cannot remember or spell the name of the location or hotel correctly.
Auto-suggest offers virtually endless options and ideas within the context of the mobile app, which is related to the characters the user has typed into the search. Auto-suggest can provide alternatives to the user, which they may not have even considered. Travel platform Airbnb use auto-suggestions within the search on their mobile app, enabling users to not only look for destinations but homes, accommodation, experiences, and adventures within the context of the search input.
Click Reduction
A recent study by Koddi found that guests are 14% more likely to complete a booking if there are 4.6 clicks or less during the booking process. Minimising the number of actions a user has to take between browsing a hotel and booking a room, saves guests valuable time, allowing them to manage their booking in just a few simple taps. Limiting the number of fields a user has to fill out during the booking process is also an important factor to consider when designing a hotel app.
‘Forms with fewer fields have a 65% higher conversion rate on mobile’. — Koddi
Removing unnecessary pages, designing simple call-to-actions and smooth interactions can help guide the user onto the next stage of the booking process.
Creating a simple and seamless payment process for users is one of the biggest ways to increase conversion rates. There are a number of ways to optimise the purchase process, implementing postcode auto-complete, Apple and Android Pay and credit card OCR are all great ways to speed up the booking process and encourage conversion.
Offline Functionality
One of the most significant advantages a mobile app can offer a guest compared to other devices is offline functionality. This is particularly beneficial to travellers where users may not have access to wifi, high roaming charges or limited internet access. Offline functionality can provide your travellers with a host of features such as access to maps, guides and tourist information, removing limitations and encouraging guests to use your app and features again.
Membership Programmes
Offering a membership scheme to your guests through your hotel’s mobile app is a great way to encourage direct bookings. A report found that 71% of consumers who are members of loyalty programs say memberships are a meaningful part of their relationship with a brand. Budget hotel chain, easyHotel has integrated their clubBedzzz membership scheme into their new mobile booking app, providing users with access to discounts and incentives such as free WIFI and late check-out.
A Multi-Channel Booking Experience
Today’s modern consumers move seamlessly from platform to platform, no longer tied to a specific medium. Whether it be desktop, mobile, tablet or smartwatch, individuals will utilise whatever device suits their needs at any given time, meaning that hotel apps must be available across all devices. Allowing users to browse hotels on their desktop, begin the booking process on their tablet, purchase a hotel room on their phone and access their booking reference through their smartwatch, provides guests with a convenient way to manage their booking and increases customer value.
Personalised Notifications
Mobile applications can provide brands with a range of insights into their consumers’ shopping trends, allowing brands to see how users interact with their app, their shopping habits, and drop-off points. These vital insights equip hotel brands to offer enhanced personalised services to their guests such as discounts and exclusive offers. A recent study by Access found that 76% of customers felt that receiving personalised discounts and offers based on their purchase history was important, while 56% of customers are more likely to buy from brands that offer personalised discounts. Notifications are also a great way to enhance the guest experience during their stay. Notifying guests of breakfast options, classes and activities going on during their stay and places to visit are great ways to enhance the guest experience.
Concierge Chat
Providing a concierge chat feature within a hotel app is a great way to instantly understand the needs of your users and provide a truly bespoke experience for your guests. A study by Moxie found that 35% of guests would not have purchased a room if concierge chat was not offered to them. Providing guests with the means to book a taxi, order room service, dry cleaning, answer queries they have or additional extras through the app, helps your hotel brand to fulfil their needs with just a few simple taps of their smartphone.
Differentiating your Hotel App
As the travel industry becomes increasingly competitive, more and more companies are implementing mobile applications into their digital strategy to further enhance their customer experience. A recent study found that 60% of travel brands have stated that they are looking to invest or replace their mobile app within the next year. With an increasing number of hotel brands offering mobile applications, it’s vital to differentiate your mobile app and offer even more value to your customers. Luxury hotel brand, The Ritz-Carlton offers additional features within their mobile app, implementing Quick Response Codes to provide guests with information about the art, furniture, and areas of interest featured in their hotels. Reflecting the Ritz-Carlton’s uniqueness and luxurious brand.
