How to get more direct bookings from your hotel website

You get more direct bookings mainly by removing barriers in the booking path on your own website, not by bringing more visitors to it. A guest who lands on a hotel website is already interested. If they can’t book right away, can’t see the price, or get stopped by a card requirement, they finish the booking on an OTA they know. After removing two such barriers, Hotel Silva saw direct bookings grow 13 % year over year.

Every OTA booking means commission and a guest the hotel doesn’t really know. A direct booking means a higher margin and the guest’s contact for next season. And a large share of guests who end up booking through a portal visited the hotel’s own site first. This guide walks through the places where hotel websites lose them, and how to measure the result in a way you can trust.

Why do guests leave the hotel website for an OTA?

Because the OTA gives them certainty the hotel site often doesn’t. On the portal, the guest knows the steps, gets instant confirmation, and sees cancellation terms and reviews in one place. On the hotel website they have to find all of it again, and at the first moment of doubt they close the tab and go back to what they know.

So the hotel isn’t competing with the OTA on who brings the guest. It is competing on where booking is easier. That is a contest the hotel controls completely, because it can change its own website at any time.

Can guests book instantly on your website?

The most common and most expensive barrier is an inquiry form instead of a booking. The guest enters dates and a message, hits send and waits. They have no certainty the room is free or that a reply will come in time. Meanwhile they open an OTA that confirms within a minute.

This is exactly what happened at Hotel Silva: the site had only an inquiry form, and most visitors left the form page without filling anything in. After a booking engine with instant confirmation replaced the form and the mandatory card was dropped for free-cancellation bookings, direct bookings grew 13 % year over year. The full story is in the Hotel Silva case study.

An inquiry still makes sense as a complement, for weddings, corporate events or full-property rentals. As the only way to book a standard room, it costs the hotel bookings every day.

Where do guests drop off inside the booking engine?

Even a hotel with a booking engine can lose guests inside it. Walk through a booking from date selection to confirmation, and at every step ask what the guest has to overcome.

A mandatory card. If the card protects against no-shows, check how often no-shows actually happen. At Hotel Silva it was roughly once a year, while the card requirement deterred guests every day. So the hotel stopped requiring a card for free-cancellation bookings. If no-shows are a real problem, there is a softer option: require a card only for non-refundable rates.

Too many steps and fields. Every field you don’t need to process the booking is a reason to stop. Address, date of birth or special requests can often be collected after booking or at check-in.

Unclear cancellation terms. A guest who doesn’t know whether they can cancel books where they do know. Cancellation terms belong next to the rate, not behind a link to the terms and conditions.

Surprise charges at the end. A city tax, parking or breakfast that appears only in the last step feels like a trap. Show the final price as early as possible.

How should you show your price against OTAs?

Guests will check the price on the OTA; plan for it. The price on your site doesn’t have to be lower, but it must not be worse, and the benefit of booking direct has to be visible.

• Show the price as soon as dates are picked. A site where the guest has to click through three steps to see a price sends them to the portal that shows it immediately.
• Name the benefit of booking direct. Breakfast included, late checkout, parking, more flexible cancellation or a returning-guest discount. A benefit the guest doesn’t know about convinces nobody.
• Consider a price comparison on your site. Some booking engines can show OTA prices next to yours. It helps only if your price really is the same or better.

What exactly you may offer on your own site is governed by your OTA contracts. Before you set a different price or different terms, check what your contracts allow.

Does booking work on a phone?

A large share of guests search for a stay on their phone, and the mobile booking path is often much worse than on desktop. Typical problems: a date picker that is hard to use, a booking widget in an iframe that doesn’t fit the screen, small buttons, or a keyboard that covers the form field.

Walk the whole booking on your own phone, from the home page to the confirmation. Why you won’t catch this on desktop is explained in mobile website: your customers see a different site. Load time matters here too, since guests on mobile data are the least patient; see website speed costs you money.

What makes guests trust a hotel website?

On an OTA the guest sees hundreds of reviews. On the hotel website, often none. Yet trust decides most in the last steps, when the guest is entering their details.

• Reviews and ratings right in the booking path, not on a separate page the guest never reaches.
• A visible way to contact reception during booking. A guest with a question who can’t find an answer leaves.
• A clear confirmation. An instant email with a booking number and the terms. A guest who isn’t sure the booking went through will call, write, or in the worse case book again somewhere else.

How should a hotel website sell offers and packages?

Packages (wellness, a romantic weekend, bed and breakfast) are a strong weapon against OTAs, because the guest can’t find them anywhere else. Yet websites often present them on a page with no direct way into the booking. Every offer should have a button that takes the guest into the booking engine with the package already selected, not to a generic calendar.

Hotel Silva keeps testing its offers and booking forms. That is the right approach: which offer sells, and in what form, can’t be guessed from a desk. A test shows it.

How do you measure direct bookings against OTA bookings?

Without measurement you can’t tell whether a change worked or the season just arrived.

Track the share, not just the count. The absolute number of direct bookings rises and falls with demand. The share of direct bookings in all bookings (from your booking engine, channel manager or PMS) shows whether guest behavior is changing.

Compare year over year. The difference between May and July is the season itself. Comparing the same period year over year filters the season out, which is how Hotel Silva’s result was measured.

Measure the website path all the way to confirmation. The booking engine often runs on another domain. Without cross-domain measurement in GA4 you see the visitor leaving your site, not the booking. How to break the path into steps is covered in funnel analysis in GA4.

Test where you can. A year-over-year comparison is a strong signal, but an A/B test, with both versions running at the same time, is stronger proof. Hotels with enough traffic can test the booking form or offers directly.

One more thing the booking numbers won’t show: a direct booking gives the hotel the guest’s contact. How to turn a one-time guest into a returning one is covered in what is customer retention.

Frequently asked questions

How can a hotel get more direct bookings?

Remove the barriers in the booking path on your own website: offer instant online booking instead of an inquiry, don’t require a card without a real reason, show the price and the benefit of booking direct as soon as dates are picked, and walk the whole path on a phone. Measure the share of direct bookings in all bookings, ideally year over year.

Why do guests book through OTAs even after finding the hotel website?

Because the OTA gives them certainty the hotel site often doesn’t: instant confirmation, familiar cancellation terms, reviews and an easy mobile checkout. If booking on the hotel site feels slower or less certain, the guest goes back to the portal they know.

Does the price on the hotel website have to be lower than on OTAs?

No. What matters is that booking direct is never worse. The advantage can be something other than price: breakfast, late checkout, parking or more flexible cancellation. Check your OTA contracts for what you may offer on your own site.

How do you measure direct bookings against OTA bookings?

Track the share of direct bookings in all bookings from your booking engine, channel manager or PMS, not the absolute number. Hotel demand is seasonal, so compare the same period year over year. On the website, measure the path in GA4 all the way to the booking confirmation, including the hand-off to a booking engine on another domain.

Should a hotel require a card for every booking?

Only if it protects against something that actually happens. At Hotel Silva no-shows were nearly nonexistent; after the mandatory card was dropped for free-cancellation bookings and the inquiry form replaced by a booking engine, direct bookings grew 13 % year over year.

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The takeaway

Guests who reach a hotel website are already interested. Whether they book direct or through an OTA depends on what they experience in the booking path: can they book now, can they see the price and the benefit, does anything get in the way on a phone. Start with the barrier your data shows as the biggest, and measure the direct-booking share year over year.

These are exactly the barriers Kaen, your growth buddy, watches for: he reads your website analytics, finds the step where guests drop off, builds the variations and tests them once you approve. What he does for hotels is on the Kaen for hotels page.