If your hotel is considering ways to increase direct bookings, what to look for in hotel booking software is an important consideration. The right booking engine is a crucial decision that significantly impacts both guest experience and your overall success.
As you navigate the many options available, it’s essential to understand what key features contribute to a seamless and efficient booking process. In this blog, we’re exploring the essential elements you should take into consideration when selecting hotel booking software. The right booking software improves the likelihood of conversion, user satisfaction, and ultimately, direct revenue.
Key Features to Consider in Hotel Booking Software
There’s a lot to consider when looking for a new hotel booking engine. It needs to be compatible with your existing technology, look good, and most important of all, convince travel shoppers to book. At a high level, some of the key considerations when it comes to your booking engine are:
- A user-friendly interface
- Mobile compatibility
- Integrations
- Real-time availability and pricing
- Secure payment processing
- Customization and flexibility
- ADA compliance
- Support and service
In this blog, we’ll explain what makes each of these features so important, as well as what to look out for when shopping for a new booking engine.
User-Friendly Interface
A user-friendly interface is the cornerstone of a positive guest experience. Your booking engine should have intuitive navigation, clear design, and a truly straightforward process to compare options and get from point A (travel shopping) to point B (making a booking!).
A streamlined interface ensures that potential guests can quickly and effortlessly find the information they need. This includes clear calls to action exactly where guests expect to see them, as well as clear rates and comparable options.
Mobile Compatibility
We’re in the smartphone era, with more and more people relying on their smartphone as their primary method of browsing the Internet. Mobile compatibility is non-negotiable. From 2020 to 2021, the number of mobile hotel bookings doubled. Hotel booking software must offer a responsive and optimized experience across every device size.
Ensure that potential guests can seamlessly make reservations on their smartphones or tablets. A mobile-first booking engine doesn’t compromise. It should be just as easy to book on your phone as on your computer!
Integration Capabilities
The ability to integrate with other systems and third-party applications is vital for your hotel management ecosystem. The ability to seamlessly integrate with your property management systems (PMS) is essential for real-time updates and seamless data flow.
A reliable integration between your PMS and booking engine reduces the risk of overbooking and enhances operational efficiency. When considering what to look for in booking hotel software, this should be at the top of your list.
Real-Time Availability and Pricing
Real-time updates on room availability and pricing help you avoid double bookings. Real-time availability provides accurate information to potential guests. With the right integrations, you can enable dynamic pricing strategies that feed to the direct booking channels on your hotel website.
Pricing strategies help maximize revenue during peak times and attract bookings during slower periods. A robust hotel booking software integrated with your hotel PMS will provide real-time synchronization to reflect changes instantly across all platforms.
Secure Payment Processing
Ensuring the security of financial transactions is a top priority. Hotel booking software must comply with industry standards for secure payment processing, safeguarding hotel and guest data. Making it clear that a guest is on your trusted booking page increases the likelihood that someone will convert. A secure payment gateway builds trust with customers, encouraging them to complete bookings without apprehension.
Customization and Flexibility
One size does not fit all. The ability to customize the booking process allows hoteliers to tailor their offerings to align with their brand and unique value propositions. Your booking engine should look like your hotel website. It should match your branding, and ideally even be hosted on the website rather than a new URL a guest is unfamiliar with.
Fuel Travel’s online hotel booking engine software matches your website colors and design and is hosted on your domain. It provides extensive customization and flexibility, with the ability to show room rates and easily create packages, add-ons, and promotions.
ADA Compliance
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a set of laws to ensure people with disabilities have access to public spaces. Hotels, including their websites, are required to be ADA-compliant. The ADA has clear guidelines for the physical spaces of hotels’ common areas and guest rooms. But the web side of things is more of a grey area, as the act does not have concrete regulations for websites that represent the spaces that are mandated to comply with ADA guidelines.
The most commonly accepted accessibility guidelines, WCAG are regularly updated to reflect the changing nature of web browsing. To best ensure that your website and booking engine are ADA compliant, ensure that both are designed to meet at least WCAG 2.0 standards.
Customer Support
Responsive customer support is a lifeline for hoteliers implementing new booking software. Whether addressing technical issues or providing training, reliable customer support ensures a smooth onboarding process and ongoing assistance.
When considering a new technology provider of any kind, investigate the level of customer support they provide. Do they charge for phone support or are you easily able to get ahold of a real person who can provide answers quickly and efficiently? Reliable support ensures that your booking engine is set up properly and maintained whenever updates happen at your hotel.
What to look for in hotel booking software
In conclusion, the right hotel booking software is pivotal for enhancing the guest experience and driving business success. A holistic product that considers user-friendliness, mobile compatibility, integration capabilities, real-time updates, secure payment processing, customization, analytics, and excellent customer support is essential for selecting a comprehensive solution.
For hoteliers seeking a booking engine that ticks all the boxes, consider the Fuel Booking Engine. Designed to meet the demanding needs of modern hotels and hotel groups, the Fuel Booking Engine provides a user-friendly interface, seamless integration, real-time updates, and responsive customer support. Elevate your hotel’s online presence and streamline the booking process with the Fuel Booking Engine.
