Practical ways to shift more hotel demand to your direct booking channel.
By Kathleen Kubota
Sr. Director of Integrated Marketing, Screenfire
OTAs are an important part of almost every hotel’s distribution strategy. They provide reach, visibility, and access to travelers your hotel may not capture on its own. Online travel agencies like Expedia, Booking.com, Kayak, etc., etc. are mostly a blessing … but also serious competitors for your margins.
The problem isn’t using OTAs. It’s relying on them for guests you could be booking directly. Hotels should promote direct booking. So how do you start shifting the mix?
1. Give Guests a Reason to Book Direct
Just saying “Book Direct” isn’t a benefit. Tell guests why they should.
Offer advantages that don’t require discounting, such as greater flexibility, preferred room selection, complimentary parking, an amenity, or another small perk that matters to your guests.
Make the benefit clear everywhere you ask someone to book.
2. Make Sure Your Direct Rate Is Competitive
Guests comparison shop. If they find your hotel on an OTA and then visit your website, don’t give them a reason to go back.
Your revenue manager should keep a close eye on rate parity and regularly compare your direct offer with what guests see on major OTAs. Rate matters, but so do cancellation policies, fees, room descriptions, packages, and overall value.
Your website should make booking directly feel like the obvious choice.
3. Make Your Website Easier to Book Than an OTA
OTAs have spent years and enormous budgets making reservations fast and intuitive. Your website is competing with that experience.
But you can make it easy too. Make rates and availability easy to find, keep your “Book Now” button prominent, and eliminate unnecessary steps between interest and reservation. Then test the entire process on your phone.
If booking direct is harder, guests have little incentive to do it.
4. Own Your Brand Search
A traveler may discover your hotel on an OTA and then search for your property by name. That’s an opportunity to capture the booking directly.
Make sure your official website is easy to identify in search results, your Google Business Profile is complete, and your paid search strategy protects important branded terms when necessary.
You’ve already earned their interest. Don’t make them search for a way to book with you.
5. Get Found for What Makes You Relevant
Travelers don’t always search for a hotel by name. They search for properties that meet specific needs, and increasingly, they’re asking AI to help them find them.
Make sure your website clearly communicates what makes you relevant, whether that’s pet-friendly accommodations, an LGBTQ+ welcoming experience, EV charging, or proximity to popular attractions.
Strong SEO and AIO help the right guests find your hotel when it fits what they’re looking for.
6. Turn OTA Guests into Future Direct Guests
An OTA may deliver the first booking, but it doesn’t have to deliver every booking after that.
Give OTA guests a great experience and make sure they know there are benefits to booking directly next time. Train your front desk team to invite guests to provide their email address at check-in to receive special offers and future promotions, giving you an opportunity to continue the relationship after check-out.
7. Put Your Past Guest Database to Work
Your past guests already know your hotel, making them some of your best prospects and advocates for future direct bookings.
Use email to promote seasonal offers, events, packages, and reasons to return. Consider friends-and-family specials that give happy guests another reason to recommend your property.
8. Market the Hotel Beyond Its Rooms
OTAs are very good at helping travelers compare rooms, rates, amenities, and reviews. Your own marketing has the opportunity to tell a much richer story.
Showcase the neighborhood, your staff, local experiences, packages, personality, and the things guests remember after they leave. Give travelers reasons to choose your hotel that aren’t easily reduced to a price comparison chart.
If they’re reading great stuff on your website, they are much more likely to book directly from there.
Don’t Eliminate OTAs. Use Them Strategically.
The goal isn’t 100 percent direct bookings. OTAs can introduce your hotel to new audiences, generate demand during needed periods, and play an important role in a healthy distribution strategy.
To capture as much direct business as possible, look at your website, search presence, booking experience, email strategy, and direct-booking proposition together. Every improvement gives your hotel another opportunity to turn demand into a direct relationship.
OTAs can help you acquire the guest. Great hotel marketing can help you keep them.
Need help? The Screenfire Hospitality team is here when you need us!
All the best, Kathleen
About the author: Kathleen Kubota is a strategic leader with deep expertise in directing integrated marketing and digital ecosystems. Prior to joining Screenfire, Kathleen spent more than a decade with the San Diego Tourism Authority. She has also held senior marketing leadership roles at Town and Country Resort, the historic Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, and Miramonte Resort and Spa. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.
