Building Relationships:
Building relationships with your Online Travel Agents representatives is very important. They can give you advice on how to rank higher and become more visible to the guest making reservation. Here are some things that Online Travel Agents may consider when ranking your hotel.

• Your hotel listing type. Example: Boutique Hotel. Are you listed it the most effective category to get your hotel noticed. What is your target audience? How many hotels are listed the same in you location?
• Location – What area does you hotel appear and what connection does your hotel have to local attractions and venues.
• Reviews – Is your Hotel getting good reviews. Bad reviews can have a big impact on guest wanting to make reservation at your hotel.
• How much commission you pay. Some Online Travel Agents will rank you high if you pay higher commissions to them. The benefits are the high ranking, but the down side is higher commissions.

Direct Hotel Online Reservation saves you money
Other than phone and walk in reservation, Direct Hotel Online Reservation is low cost and low maintenance as you are not paying high commissions and don’t need the Hotel receptions to make the reservation as it is all automated. Putting Channel Manager BookNow Button on your Hotel website allows you to get Direct Hotel reservations.

How to promote your own website so you get more Direct Hotel Online Reservation.
Your website should be created in Responsive Design. Responsive Design website is more Google searchable and website done in Responsive Design display across all devices from PC to mobile phone. The other importance of Responsive Design is that our online society has more users ever using mobile devices and Responsive Design accommodates for this
You should stay in touch with your web designer on how best to keep you website optimized with SEO tools. You should make sure that you BookNow Button is display prominent on all you website pages and not hidden.
You should list you hotel on Social Media and create Advertisements, campaigns and regular posts on what happening with you hotel including Promotions. That can give you hotel a bigger presents with you target audience. Social Media sites such as Facebook, Tweeter, Google Plus+, linkedin, Pinterest and YouTube.A new feature on your Facebook page you can put a link Direct to you website or BookNow Button. It’s called Call to Action link on Facebook. This Call to Action link allows Guests to make reservation directly through your website or BookNow Button.

Image
It is very important to have good quality photos and at least 25 photos on your Direct Booking Engine or Online Travel Agents websites so the guest can view not only room but the hotel ground and facilities. This helps the guest visualize there stay and they are not getting any surprises on what they are expecting when they arrive.

Review
Encourage guest that have enjoyed their stay at your hotel to go online and review your hotel with the Online Travel Agent they made reservation through. You can also encourage them to review your hotel on Trip Adviser.

Promote
It is important especially in off peak and shoulder seasonal period to promote your Hotel by adding Promotional Deal. Most Online Travel Agent offer Promotional Deals and www.channelmanager.com.au has Promotional Deals through its own Direct Booking Engine. The important of Promotional Deals is that when a guest finds your hotel online it is important that you capture them to make reservation. With Promotional Deals the Guest see value in the discount prices that Promotional deals offer and it an attraction for Guest to make reservation at your hotel.

Created 18 October 2015.