How hotel websites can improve the booking experience.

1. Get a room:
Eight things people want
when booking a hotel

2. Introduc)on
Booking a hotel room. No two journeys are alike. The average person visits
38 websites searching for the best hotel, in the best loca?on, with the best
room and of course at the best price. The travel journey may start on a
search engine, but where it ends depends on a number of factors. For
hoteliers though, the ul?mate goal though is to make sure this search ends
on their website.
Surveying over 1,000 travellers, as well as filming some actually carrying out
a booking, we iden?fied the eight things people want most when they book.
We ventured past the inspira?on phase and focused on what happens once
someone has decided on where to stay.
The findings are fascina?ng. SoGware providers have adopted all manner of
different approaches, and below we iden?fy which sites and booking
engines we think are doing it best. You might think that going via a third
party is what the guest wants, but our research found that there is a desire
to book direct if possible. In fact, 72% of people would book directly with
the hotel if they could be sure that they were ge;ng the best deal. It’s now
up to hoteliers to prove the direct site is best and our eight ?ps will help you
do just that.
So read on and find out what people want when they book a hotel…
This white paper would not have been possible without some special
contributors:
James Bland – Director, Hotels & Hospitality, BDRC
Lennert de Jong – Commercial Director, Ci)zenM
1
Charlie Osmond -­‐ Chief Tease, Triptease

3. 2
Photos, photos, photos
2
Show me lots of dates
3
The price isn’t right if
it’s not in my
currency
4
Reassure me
5
Tell me what more I
could have
6
Shorten the delay in
gra)fica)on
7
Let me use my
Facebook log in
8
Make it simple,
short and clean
1
The eight things

4. Once someone has decided on a hotel, they want booking to be simple and
speedy. This means they expect the process to give them what they want
easily. And what they want is to be able to find the ‘book’ buQon quickly, to
be offered concise informa?on that helps them make a decision, and to be
able to get through the payment in as few clicks as possible.
1. Make it simple, short and clean
I'm very busy and I need clear concise informaDon,
I don't want to spend ten hours booking my hotel.
Colour, size and loca?on can all be used make the ‘book’ buQon stand out.
The trick is making it as obvious as possible while staying on brand and
consistent with the look and feel of your website. Once a guest is in the
booking process, there’s no need to wax lyrical about a room. Our bookers
liked bullet points, which are used by the BeBeQer booking engine and
Starwood Hotels ,or the click to expand for addi?onal informa?on format
used by Availpro.
Keeping things short and punchy also means details of mul?ple rooms can
be viewed on one page, helping to keep the click count down. As a general
rule of thumb, avoid cluQer – too many words, ?ny photos or informa?on
hidden behind clicks which open new tabs, all make people feel like they’re
having to work too hard to get what they want. And if people aren’t geXng
what they want they will move on. 94% of people have abandoned a
booking online recently largely because of the website they’re using.
3
For them, either the process was too long or complicated or there were
technical or payment issues.
Doing this well:
Push the buIon -­‐ Big buWons encourage guests to the next step

5. Photos really do say a thousand words. Many of our bookers found too
much text overwhelming and off-­‐puXng. Photos should be a hotelier’s best
friend and ‘show don’t tell’ should be the general rule. 70% of people told us
they rely on photos to learn about a hotel, and once in the booking process
pictures really help them understand the room and get excited about staying
in it. Pop-­‐up galleries, as used by Avvio and Availpro, are a good way of
displaying mul?ple photos (and we’ll say it again, more really is more when it
comes to photos).
2. Photos, photos, photos
It’s easier to absorb a picture than read four paragraphs
of words… I think a picture paints a thousand words.
Larger hotel brands are turning to social media. Starwood’s website for W
Hotels has a curated gallery of guests’ photos from Instagram. These photos
provide candid, true-­‐to-­‐life impressions of the experience a guest can
expect, with the added bonus of Instagram’s flaQering filters. Virtual tours
are also a good op?on. Google Business View, which provides fully
interac?ve virtual tours of business interiors, claimed that restaurants using
its services during NYC Restaurant Week had a 30% higher click through to
bookings compared to those that did not. All said, it’s important hoteliers
inves?gate new ways of bringing proper?es to life online.
Doing this well:
4
Snap happy -­‐ Guests rely heavily on hotels to learn about a hotel

6. Transparency is a key factor in building beQer rela?onships with guests. An
excellent way to demonstrate this is to provide guests with a clear view on
all the informa?on they need to accurately compare choices when booking.
Our bookers par?cularly valued being shown availability results in a table
format so they could see the prices of rooms and dates either side of their
search. In our survey, 71% of people agreed that being shown prices on
dates either side of the ones they’ve selected is useful to them.
3. Show me lots of dates
When it's in a big table, where you've just got prices
and rooms against dates, that's really clear and easy
to use… it's more easy to compare." “I love this, if I
want [I can] shiT my stay by a day and save 20 bucks
This transparency gives the guest a feeling of control and builds the idea
that you as a hotelier are on their side and have their best interests at heart.
Before showing prices, make it easy to select dates in the first place -­‐ our
bookers some?mes ?ed themselves in knots.
5
No maQer how much they like that clicky calendar, people don’t really want
to go through it again.
This one’s got the clicky calendar which I like…
clicking is so much beIer. There’s so much potenDal
for typing it in wrong.
Doing this well:
Calendars with drop downs for month (as used by RegaQa) or a grid format
(Simple Booking), were well-­‐received as they cut down the number of clicks
a consumer has to make. Simply making the check-­‐out date auto-­‐complete
aGer selec?ng a check-­‐in date can save so much ?me and should be a
standard experience.
First dates -­‐ Clicking through dates helps making a decision easier

7. Plenty of websites use the loca?on of the visitor to tailor content. It may
seem obvious, but some of the sites we tested don’t show prices in the right
currency – 53% of people told us that they are frustrated by being shown
prices in currencies other than their own.
4. The price isn’t right if it’s not in my currency
Our bookers found themselves confused by prices that switched currency
from one page to the next, or when they were unable to locate a buQon to
switch to the currency they wanted. On one site we tested the currency
selector made finding the Bri?sh Pound quite a bit more difficult than was
necessary – the currency was named the ‘UK Pound’ but posi?oned
alphabe?cally between currencies star?ng with F and H (we assume this
was a reflec?on of ‘GBP’, as an alternate name for the currency). Think
about the ordering of informa?on in dropdown menus to make things as
simple as possible for your consumers.
The perfect solu?on is to use autoloca?on soGware so that any poten?al
guest is shown the website in their own language and with prices in their
own currency. However, where this is not possible, be sure to have a clear
and simple currency selector which is easy to find on the page. When it
comes to mobile, where autoloca?on is more easily possible with GPS
tracking, this technology is even more valuable as it removes a poten?ally
fiddly step from the process.
6
Doing this well:
Money, money, money -­‐ Guests want ease when looking for their currency

8. Reassurance is something OTAs focus heavily on. The ‘book’ buQon will
read ‘show deals’, percentage discounts are referenced repeatedly and our
bookers were shown up to five messages reassuring them that they were
geXng the best price. Some booking engines do a great job with this –
WebHotelier, Simple Booking and RegaQa both show before and aGer
discount prices and use colour and design to draw the consumer’s aQen?on.
5. Reassure me
It's telling me how much I'm saving,
which is good to know.
Lennert de Jong of Ci?zen M says “[Hoteliers tell me their] website is like a
bou?que, this is where you find the best products… well that might be true…
but you need to have the best deal available.”
Ci?zen M has a very interes?ng approach to this; they show the prices of
alternate hotels, complete with links for the guest to book there if they wish
to. Lennert says that this is key to their strategy of puXng the guest first.
“We do this by offering transparency… by showing what other [nearby]
hotels are charging. It’s something that we have done for some ?me… that’s
really when you help the guest to posi?on the brand and the concept, and
we are in charge there not Booking.com, not Expedia, not Google, we are in
charge to let the guest know on our page, these the hotels we compete
with, this is our price, here is the link if you want to book elsewhere.”
7
Your bouDque -­‐ Transparency shows confidence and encourages booking
Doing this well:

9. Personalisa?on is a growing trend and 68% of people said it is useful when
they are shown what upgrades they can pay for during the booking
process. Some bookers liked sites which gave them op?ons for add-­‐ons,
such as massages or airport transfers but it’s not for everyone. Make sure
lists are short and easy to skip if necessary.
6. Tell me what more I could have
There are two things to consider when offering upgrades and add-­‐ons. First,
make the value of what they’re paying for clear to the guest. For example,
think carefully before making early check-­‐in or late check-­‐out a paid-­‐for
service. Our bookers told us that they would expect this free of charge, or to
at least be offered bag storage if there addi?onal ?me in the room was not
possible. Slapping prices on these services at this stage can make the hotel
seem a liQle mercenary. Second, make sure any upgrades or add-­‐ons are
relevant and affordable -­‐ one of our bookers was shown a $2,100 upgrade
on a $400 room!
Our bookers also rapidly got frustrated when they didn’t know what was
included in a certain package. OGen this was because the ?tle of the
package wasn’t that informa?ve and details were hard to find.
8
Doing this well:
Upgrade me -­‐ Guests like to get excited before they’ve finished booking

10. 7. Shorten the delay in gra)fica)on
I like the fact that it keeps the format of the original
website, the banner is the same as the page before."
“It felt sophisDcated, it does what it needs to do in a
classy way.
Becoming trusted starts with ensuring that people have a strong sense of
your brand. In some instances the change between a hotel’s website and
the booking engine can be quite pronounced – our bookers gave posi?ve
feedback for booking engines that carried through elements of the brand,
either through design or photos. It helped keep the levels of energy and
an?cipa?on high throughout the booking process.
9
With the introduc?on of Booking Suite and Synxis’ InstaSite and Booking
Engine in context suite, the reward for consistency is becoming clear.
Although we didn’t analyse them in any depth, booking confirma?on e-­‐mails
can provide a good opportunity to improve the direct rela?onship.
A confirma?on email can suggest following the hotel on Facebook or
Instagram, and these channels can be used to communicate far more than
just special offers. Informa?on about local events builds the rela?onship and
your posi?on as a trusted guide. For example, W Hotels operate Instagram
profiles for each of their hotels with content on events, special offers and
sugges?ons for ac?vi?es.
James Bland of BDRC suggests that there is nothing wrong with asking
guests a few ques?ons about themselves first to help when offering content
that might be useful.
Doing this well:
Give me more -­‐ Payment doesn’t spell the end. Content gets guests even more excited

11. Social login is a core facet of Airbnb. It both speeds up the process of
logging-­‐in and provides them with powerful social data. Booking.com have
also started provided a Facebook login op?on. 26% of people told us they
would use a Facebook log in if it was available on a hotel booking site and it
comes as no surprise that this was higher among younger age groups.
8. Let me use my Facebook log in
If there was an opDon to log in on Facebook I
probably would, I can’t be bothered to remember a
new password every Dme.
Social login will only expand as people look for an easier way to manage
their online lives. For hoteliers the value lies in capturing accurate and useful
social data, and social sign for loyalty schemes is a temp?ng way to en?ce
consumers to part with it. As our youngest booker said, this makes her life
just that liQle bit easier.
11
Doing this well:
Plugging in a social API makes the idea of logged in rates even more en?cing
for hoteliers in the drive to garner more direct bookings. Early adop?on will
provide considerable compe??ve advantage in the years to come as
Facebook becomes the portal to the internet for millions.
Like -­‐ Social log-­‐in saves )me and provides valuable data to hotels