How to increase your direct bookings

This is the one step you cannot skip. How much comes from the booking sites, how much comes direct, how much comes from the phone and from email. Without those three figures any change is a gamble, and you end up rebuilding the website when the problem was the booking engine.

You do not need software for this: the figures you already have in your property management system and on the booking sites’ statements are enough. If direct bookings are under 20% there is plenty of room to work with; if they are over 40%, the job is refinement rather than rebuilding.

Most direct bookings are lost in the last three steps, not on the homepage. A booking engine that opens in a separate window, that asks for too much, that makes people pinch and zoom on a phone: each of these sends away someone who had already made up their mind.

Try booking your own property from your own phone, the way a guest would. It is the cheapest test there is, and it is usually enough to show you where things break down.

On the booking sites the photographs are all alike by necessity: same crop, same order, same size. Your own site is the only place where you can show what sets you apart, and almost nobody makes use of it.

Photographs count for more than words. If the view is your product, it has to be visible on the first screen, not three scrolls down.

Anyone who already knows your name will find you anyway. The room to grow is with the people searching for where to stay in your area, who at the moment find only the booking sites.

Content about the area, a Google listing that is kept up to date and matches the site, practical detail on how to get there: these are what catch the search before it turns into a search on Booking.com.

If booking on your site costs the same and offers the same, nobody will do it: the booking site feels safer. You need a reason, and it has to be stated plainly at the point where the person is deciding.

It does not have to be a discount: flexible check-in, a better room at the same price, an easier cancellation. Anything will do, as long as it is real and clearly put.

A guest who comes back costs you no commission. It is the most neglected part of the job and the most profitable: asking for the review at the right moment, getting back in touch with people who have already stayed with you, before they start looking at the booking sites again.

With a short season this counts double: last season’s guests are the cheapest channel you have for filling the next one.