Analytics Tips to Improve Hotel Sales

Analytics tools are one of the most important tools that can help hoteliers improve their strategy and increase their hotel bookings and revenue. There are several analytics tools which are both integrated with mobile applications and web sites. Here, we try to summarize some basic analytics tips, which highlights the importance of understating these tools.

1. Hoteliers have to check the statistics their analytics platform several times a day to ensure the optimum performance of their website and mobile applications.
2. The web site of a hotel, with their mobile applications, is the main communication and engagement platform with their potential guests and the strongest medium for sales.

Travel Agencies (OTA)

1. Using an analytics tool can lead to the evaluation of the channel for which OTAs use for advertising and promotion. It will help hoteliers to gain insights for the analysis of the popularity the hotel receives from the collaborating OTAs.
2. OTA’s don’t have direct links to hotels websites which might allow hoteliers to measure the publicity OTAs generate. Hoteliers can make an estimation of the possible traffic through organic results of hotels’ websites and mobile applications.
3. Check the number of times which travellers have searched directly for your hotel name through analytics tools and webmaster tools. By this way, you can provide an estimation of the promotional benefits that your hotel gets from the various OTAs.
4. Some travellers may find a hotel on a different channel other than an OTA. This will also lead to a direct search using a hotel name. But this is quite rare, only a repeat guest may prefer this kind of search. Online users prefer to click on direct links to the hotels’ websites.

Location

1. Hotel names should appeal to each geographical market.
2. Try to focus on particular time frames while checking to visit time rather than focusing on the overall focusing time.
3. Remember to check the average time and pages/screen per visit generated from each country. This will help you to make the appropriate adjustments and improvements for achieving better engagement with potential travellers from different countries. 

Device Category

1. Performance of mobile applications on the installed device is vital for the online success of a hotel.
2. Check the performance of your hotel website and mobile application in each device category.
3. Keep in touch with your web and mobile application development team or partners to specify any required improvements.
4. While checking the performance on different devices, consider each device and operating system of the device.

Data Accuracy

1. Try to measure everything correctly. Sometimes the most well-known solution providers are not able to provide 100% accurate data. But all of the analytics tools provide the right tools to optimize the results.
2.  Before linking a hotel website anywhere, like social media, advertising channels and etc, use a URL builder tool. URL builder tools, create an enhanced, tag-enriched URL. By this way, you will be able to measure the exact results of each action. Moreover, you will significantly reduce the number of “no set” visits, in other words, you will be able to have a more clear view of the results of each channel.

Setting Goals and Conversions

1. Setting goals and conversions are essential to evaluate if a campaign has achieved a satisfactory ROI.
2. Remember to always have a wider view of your hotel performance. Consider different time frames and channels. Many channels might bring you a quality audience that will not convert immediately or will convert later through a third party.
3. Have a look at the overall traffic generated by each collaborated channel. Check the time spent as well as the number of the check availability actions it has generated.