Online Travel Agencies, or OTAs, can be a powerful asset for hotels looking to connect with more customers and drive more bookings.
These sites — like Agoda and Booking.com — tend to attract huge volumes of traffic, made up of users who trust the platform and are looking to make a booking.
The best listings on these sites get far more attention than a typical hotel website. And as more tourists move to online booking methods, the trend looks set to continue.
While OTAs can be a goldmine for hotels, you need to approach it correctly. Building a strong OTA strategy is a great place to start, and in this article we’ll show you how to do that.
How to master OTA strategy - Understand your customers !!
Success with OTAs starts with understanding your market, and really getting to know the people who want to stay at your hotel.
Think about who your typical guests are. Consider their ages, income brackets, preferences, pain points, nationalities, and more. Think about what differentiates your property from others, and why people pick you over other hotels.
This will help you create more compelling, focused profiles on OTAs, choose the right OTAs to concentrate on, and stand out from the competition.
Explore local options
Many hotels choose to focus solely on big, international OTAs like Booking.com. However, while these global sites are excellent channels to focus on, you should also consider more local OTAs.
In India, for example, sites like MakeMyTrip, Yatra, and EaseMyTrip all get lots of traffic from domestic Indian tourists, a fast-growing market that could represent a great opportunity for your hotel.
Build attractive OTA listings and profiles
One of the biggest challenges with OTAs is standing out from the many other hotels in your area and market.
To succeed here, you’ll need to focus on building attractive and engaging profiles and listings. Include high-quality photos, detailed and up-to-date information, and be quick to respond to public questions. A well-maintained listing makes your hotel seem professional and trustworthy, and can result in higher rankings.
Encourage (positive) reviews
One of the best ways to make your hotel stand out on OTAs is to have a lot of glowing reviews and ratings from previous guests. Encourage your guests to leave a good review if they enjoyed their stay with you.
Choose the right Channel Manager
A good Channel Manager is one of the best tools available to you when it comes to OTA strategy. A Channel Manager allows you to manage your listings across multiple OTAs — making sure key information like availability and rates is regularly updated, keeping track of all bookings, and avoiding overbookings and other errors.
Work with Hotel-Spider
Hotel-Spider’s Channel Manager is built to help you build and maintain a strong presence across all the right OTAs, ensuring your guests get the right information at all times and helping you run a smooth, successful OTA strategy.
Book a demo with us to learn more and get started.
