Game over OTAs? 8 innovations to drive direct bookings in 2024

Make sure your hotel is set up for success in 2024 with the latest innovations from Triptease.

If there was one topic that dominated all conversations about hotel technology over the past 12 months, it was automation and A.I. That’s not a trend that’s going anywhere in 2024, so let’s take a look at the latest innovations that smart hoteliers will be using to save time while maximising direct bookings and revenue in the new year.

Industry-leading data to power your direct booking strategy

A universal challenge for hoteliers is acquiring good quality data and using it to automate impactful marketing strategies. In early 2023, Triptease introduced the Data Marketing Platform, offering hoteliers the data sophistication of an OTA, along with automated ways to activate this data across multiple channels. This platform provides access to strategic marketing solutions utilizing unique price, market, and customer data.

Triptease's tools, powered by valuable data and connections, now offer customers the choice of both essential digital marketing and tailored data packages. Hoteliers experience flexibility, improve ROI, and leads to more efficient and effective marketing campaigns for hoteliers.

Solve your metasearch parity for good and increase direct booking conversion rate by 158%

Triptease’s Price Match on Metasearch feature has redefined how hoteliers can offer competitive pricing on Google Hotel Ads. It detects when an OTA is undercutting you and dynamically adjusts the direct price by ‘just enough’ on both metasearch and the booking engine so you win the direct booking. It’s not just about lowering prices; it's about providing value to the customer at the right moment.

This approach has been effective for hotels like the Royce Hotels, which has experienced a 158% increase in direct booking conversion rate and Dream Inn Resort, which has seen a 76% increase in click-through rate. In a market where every click counts, it's vital for your hotel to stand out by offering the best prices.

Showcase your best price across your marketing channels

In addition to Price Match, Triptease brought to market Price Preview capabilities. This feature, powered by the data marketing platform, allows you to display dynamic pricing in your advertising. It works across Paid Search, Email and Retargeting.

Qualifying traffic with a +8% conversion rate on Paid Search

When customers search on Google, more so with generic search terms, they are in the process of refining their options, with price being a pivotal factor in ruling out choices beyond their budget.

Triptease’s Price Preview feature on Paid Search ads offers potential travellers an instant glimpse into prices. It enables hotels to display a live ‘from’ price directly in their Paid Search ads which pre-qualifies customers for a stronger conversion rate.

Hotels that were using Price Preview saw an average increase in CVR of +8%. The feature offers hotels a significant Paid Search advantage over OTAs in attracting the right audience more efficiently.

Price preview and more creative control for Retargeting Ads

Customers often visit multiple sites during their booking journey, with price being a key deciding factor. Showing competitive prices early can entice potential guests back to your site. Triptease Retargeting combines dynamic pricing with customizable ads, giving hotels control over ad design and pricing strategy while preserving their brand identity. The 'from price' is displayed if no search is made on the booking engine, while more personalized data (specific dates, room types, and rates) is shown when a guest actively searches for availability.

With Google set to phase out 3rd Party Cookies, Triptease is already developing ways to effectively form audiences and attribute conversions in a cookie-less world. The focus remains on identifying potential guests and creating personalized, engaging ads enriched with dynamic pricing data.

Price preview in ‘set-and-forget’ emails that drive a 13X ROI

Despite well-designed booking engines, hotels often lose revenue due to cart abandonment and no availability. These issues are causing significant revenue leakage for hotels: recent data shows 80% of guests abandoning their cart (source) and 20% finding no availability (Triptease global data). 

Triptease DMP automates Cart abandonment and 'Back-in-stock' emails, re-engaging guests who didn’t complete their booking or faced no room availability. Additionally, it enriches hotel’s CRMs with high-intent guest segments and behavioral data, enabling personalized email marketing campaigns based on detailed guest insights like party size and check-in data. Thanks to this automation and data integration hotels are now seeing a 13X return on investment (ROI) and 4% website revenue contribution from an automated ‘Set-and-forget’ tool - in just one month.

Send high-intent customer data to your CRM automatically

If Triptease’s automated Emails aren’t quite right for your hotel brand, there is also the option to send the same data straight to your own CRM so you can build your own email strategy. If you are using PushTech, Mailchimp, Revinate or Salesforce as your CRM, you can send Triptease data straight to your CRM to run your own bespoke campaigns.

Save time by automating your website messaging strategy

With a focus around AI and automation, this year Triptease enhanced the Triptease Message Builder to include an automated campaign headline generator feature, powered by Open AI's ChatGPT.

With this new feature, hoteliers can quickly generate multiple engaging campaign headlines tied to the goal or intent of their message, saving time and effort while also improving the effectiveness of the campaign.

Join the industry’s leading voices at the Direct Booking Summit

The Direct Booking Summits in Bangkok and Chicago, hosted by Triptease, were hubs of innovation, focusing on automation and AI in hospitality. These events offered more than just insights—they were vibrant, collaborative gatherings for hoteliers to learn, network, and share in the excitement of industry advancements. Register your interest to join us next year for this invaluable experience to stay at the forefront of hotel marketing and connect with a passionate community.

The hotel industry in 2024 demands automated technology to driving direct bookings. Triptease’s latest innovations offer just that – a suite of tools powered by the Triptease Data Marketing platform to simplify complex tasks, engage guests more effectively, and provide data-driven insights for smarter decision-making.