Not all guests get guidance from travel agents when booking a hotel. For them, the online experience is particularly important as it represents the main aspect of their booking decision. During this process, everything potential guests see online is important because, at that point, they are assessing whether or not you are the ideal hotel for their stay. This can be explained by the hotel sentiment score, which measures on a 100% scale how positively your hotel is perceived by potential guests. A study by the Texas Christian University and the University of South Carolina found that a 1% improvement in a hotel's sentiment score could lead to a 0.38% increase in bookings. Therefore, to maximize your hotel's sentiment score which will increase direct bookings, here are three guest online experience mistakes you should avoid:

1. Having an uneven quality of online content

Maintaining consistent, high-quality content across all your online platforms is crucial to boost direct bookings. When there are inconsistencies, it raises doubts about your hotel and diminishes your sentiment score. This is a logical consequence because if prospective guests see mixed messages – some positive, some negative – they will not trust what you are showing them. For example, not having a consistent set of qualitative promotional pictures can make it unclear to potential guests how beautiful your hotel really is. To prevent this, remove any type of content not promoting your hotel enough and establish a quality standard to maintain content consistency. When everything aligns, your potential guests will more easily go from uncertainty to desire, making it more likely for them to book your hotel with confidence.

2. Offering a flawed booking experience

Ensuring a positive booking experience for your guests is just as crucial as their actual stay at your hotel. If you neglect the booking phase, it may deter direct bookings or create a negative initial impression of your hotel. Now, let's explore two common mistakes in a booking experience that can result in a loss of direct bookings. The first mistake involves either omitting or making it difficult to find essential information about your hotel. Prospective guests should not have to navigate through your website extensively or search online for key details like directions or the ideal visiting times. It is vital to ensure these details are easily accessible to prevent frustration. Moreover, keeping these information current and comprehensive is essential to avoid misinforming potential guests and potentially losing bookings. The second mistake is failing to streamline the booking process. It is important to make the experience as hassle-free as possible for potential guests, simplifying the journey from inquiry to reservation. This can be done by analyzing every steps of your prospective guests' reservation journey, identifying any difficulties, and developing efficient answers to fix them.

3. Missing out on your competitors best online practices

Adopting the best of what your competitors are doing online is an effective way to ensure your hotel does not suffer a disadvantageous comparison. Indeed, when potential guests decide which hotel to choose, they will compare yours with others. If what you do online is of lesser quality than your competitors, your hotel’s sentiment score will be lowered through the comparison. Therefore, by implementing your competitors' best online practices, you not only stay competitive but also make everything that you add on top a bonus for prospective guests to choose you over the others. To do so, seek superior and replicable strategies that are not tied to specific hotel characteristics. Let's take luxury resorts as an example. Many of them, when they create introductory videos, mainly focus on drone shots or wide-angle views, with very few shots from the guest's perspective. However, if you look at the online experience offered by the most advanced luxury hotels in terms of digital marketing, you will notice that they mainly present the guest’s point of view. This is because what matters most to guests is seeing what their experience will be like, and giving them a glimpse of it boosts their sentiment score. This approach is a typical replicable and superior strategy that you can uncover when analyzing what your competitors excel at online.

In summary, by avoiding these three online experience mistakes — having an uneven online content quality, offering a flawed booking experience, and missing out on your competitors best online practices — you can maximize your hotel's sentiment score and, in turn, increase your direct bookings. If you recognize these mistakes in your approach, it is never too late to curate an exceptional online experience for your guests!

Antoine Foucard
Founder & CEO