This week our Ops Manager and I met our new account manager from booking.com (referred to as BDC from here onwards) on zoom. Apologies in advance that this won’t be a relevant read for non serviced accommodation people, however for those in SA, I hope this little update serves as a helpful reminder that leads to more bookings.
Although we generate the majority of our bookings direct, we do still have a few properties that benefit greatly from BDC acting as part of our sales team. So it is still important for us to understand what their data is telling us so we can optimise the properties where we want to attract guests through their platform.
The aim of this post is to highlight some of the tweaks you could make now to optimise your listings and ultimately secure a few more bookings. I’ll share what recommendations were made by the BDC account manager and explain what they mean so you can weigh up your own options.
CANCELLATION POLICY
BDC recommendation – Reducing your flexible 30 day policy to 0-1 days before check in would match the current demand in both policies and book windows.
It is no surprise to hear that 81% of guests want to have free cancellations right now. With our current cancellation policy of 30 days (ie only get a refund if cancel 30+ days before check in date) it makes our properties less attractive compared to those with shorter cancellation periods. Combine that with the fact that 50%+ of stays are booked last minute, it means we are missing out on more potential bookings. In other words, if prospective guests were to filter their search on BDC based on a free cancellation policy, our properties wouldn’t even be seen.
Whilst moving our policy from 30 days to 1 day doesn’t work for us, we can reduce it to 7 days to close the gap in terms of what the current demand wants in terms of policies.
LENGTH OF STAY
BDC recommendation – With 46% of guests booking a 1 night stay, ensuring no minimum length of stay restriction will allow you the best opportunity to attract bookings
We’ve typically worked on the basis of a 3 night minimum stay and with some properties do a 2 night minimum stay. You will need to weigh up if the profit generated by a 1 night stay justifies the service time associated and the exposure your property gets to wear & tear.
A happy medium may be to set your pricing such that the price for a 1 night stay is higher than the nightly rate for a 3 night stay. Whilst BDC is capable of doing this we have encountered challenges with our channel manager Kigo being able to map across price variables like this for us. However, this is something the account manager is now exploring for us with her technical team.
THE GENIUS PROGRAMME
BDC recommendation – Make the most of our Genius programme – which offers visibility boosting and an opportunity for incremental bookings and revenue.
The Genius Programme is essentially a discount of 10% offered to corporate and repeat bookers and BDC quote the following benefits:
- Visibility boost – with tagging and filters
- 18% incremental bookings
- 17% incremental revenue
The stats we got from BDC did show that our Genius properties did receive more bookings than the non Genius ones. If you’re using genius however you need to remember that any other promotions you go in and add will stack on top of the genius 10%. So if you were to create a manual winter promo offer 15% off, and then your property was booked by a genius guest, you would end up giving out an overall 25% discount, then of course you have the 15% commission to BDC, so you’d only be left with 60% of your ideal nightly rate. Just something you need to be on top of.
To be eligible for Genius your property needs to meet the following criteria:
-be available and open-bookable on Booking.com
-have received 3 or more guest reviews
-have a review score of at least 7.5*
You can check in the opportunities section of your extranet to see if any more of your properties have become eligible.
THE PREFERRED PROGRAMME
BDC recommendation – Make the most of our Preferred programme – which enables you to fill more occupancy without impacting your bottom line.
The preferred programme is essentially paying BDC a little extra in return for them boosting your visibility to the BDC audience. Instead of the standard 15% commission, you are charged 18%. BDC list the main benefits to be:
- Fill more properties without discounting
- Grow business long-term
- Receive more visibility & reach more guests
- Stand out from your competitors and earn on average 65% more page views
You become eligible for this once you meet certain scores for performance, reviews and pricing.
For our area, 84% of all guests book a preferred property that has the little thumb icon. Check if you have any properties eligible for the Preferred Partner Programme that are not yet activated.
MOBILE RATES
BDC recommendation -Take the opportunity to offer Mobile Rates – this allows you to stand out from competition in an evolving market.
This is essentially offering a 10% discount to mobile users.BDC list the main benefits to be:
- Mobile rates give partners 26% more bookings from mobile traffic
- Stand out on mobile devices with badges
- Positively impact your overall ranking on Booking.com.
We learned that 74% of all bookings in our area are made on a mobile device.
This is one of those situations you have to be careful of not discounting too heavily by accident ie the 10% mobile PLUS the 10% for Genius.
So there you have it. I hope this might prompt a quick 5 min check on things to optimise your BDC listings that might just bring an extra booking or two in the weeks ahead.
And do share any other tweaks here that have been working for you.