When reservations are slow, it’s totally normal to wonder if your prices are too high. Your response to drop the ADR, run a promotion, or offer a discount makes it feel like you’re doing something, anything, to address the issue. But those solutions only solve for the short-term, it doesn’t fix the root of your problem.
As a narrative example: a client asked for help increasing their occupancy rate. Their room rates were competitive for the market and their reviews were strong, but their bookings weren’t at the level they expected. We spent time talking about “shoulder season” or weekday packages, but we needed to dig into the analytics to discover the problem was their funnel.
Your hotel probably has a similar issue: you show up in search and your site gets traffic, but you don’t see that traffic turn into bookings. Most hotels look at changing their prices and amenities first, and those are good starting points, but not always the right solution.
We’ve got some free advice for you about what’s usually happening instead:
1. Your Website Isn’t Converting
People think once someone lands on their website, that’s it. They must be there to book and…boom! Here comes your reservation pipeline. But if that’s how things worked, you wouldn’t be here looking for answers.
In reality, traffic without conversion is just web noise. Website conversions happen more frequently when you focus on the full site journey, on the details most people overlook, including what’s working and not working. If a page loads too slowly, a pop-up fires too soon, room descriptions don’t illustrate the guest experience, or your photos are outdated, it can lead to accumulation friction, which erodes guest confidence and suppresses bookings.
According to Google, 53% of mobile users abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load. Hotel booking decisions are regularly made on mobile devices, so we hope that number makes you pause here and go check on how long your page takes to load. It’s ok, we’ll wait.
Improving your conversion rate usually requires a willingness to dig, test, and learn. Evaluate where guests are dropping off. Read your room descriptions out loud. Ask yourself whether the site experience reflects the same level of care you put into the property itself.
Make small, consistent improvements and it should add up to more reservations.
2. It’s Not Easy to Book
A guest who clicks “Book Now” is as close to a conversion as you’re going to get—don’t make things complicated.
Think about your own experiences buying something online. More steps means more opportunities for people to quit. Every mandatory account and rigid cancellation policy means a guest who was ready to book can painlessly reconsider.
Research from Skift found that nearly 40% of abandoned hotel bookings happen on the confirmation page, after the guest has already entered their information. They made it that far and still left.
Most of the time, abandoning reservations at the final stage happens because guests are surprised by something—usually a fee. Think about how many times you’ve walked away from a purchase when you found out the shipping cost was astronomical at checkout.
It’s the same for hotel bookings. Resort fees, destination fees, and other taxes that weren’t flagged earlier in the process feel like a bait and switch and can leave guests with a bad impression.
Be upfront and transparent with your fees; it’s a good conversion strategy.
One more thing to consider: ask someone you trust from outside your company for an unvarnished perspective. This is especially useful if you’ve audited your own checkout experience so many times that you can no longer see it clearly. Find a friend, a family member, someone who will actually tell you where they felt something was off or there was tension in their process. Someone new will usually see what you’ve stopped noticing.
3. You’re Not Following Up
If we’re being honest, letting a warm lead become cold is probably the biggest source of your problem.
Warm leads happen when a potential guest visits your website, checks availability, and leaves without booking. Most hotels choose to ignore these prospective guests, but you shouldn’t. According to Klaviyo, abandoned booking recovery flows generate some of the highest ROI of any automated email sequence in hospitality because the audience is already warm.
Our advice is to try retargeting the person first. Retargeting ads follow them across the internet as gentle reminders of what they left behind and work because the audience has already self-selected; they came to you first.
Next, we recommend executing your abandoned booking email flow. If a guest enters their email in your reservation system, you already have everything you need to bring them back. A simple, low-pressure sequence like, “We noticed you were looking at dates in July. Can we help answer any questions?” opens the door without feeling like a hard sell.
There are tons of reasons someone abandons their booking, and sometimes a guest just needs a small push to commit. A value add like a complimentary breakfast, a spa credit, or early check-in make the decision feel easier without training guests to expect lower rates.
The right offer at the right moment can recover a booking that had nothing to do with the nightly rate in the first place.
The Bigger Picture
Lowering your rates is easy and works exactly once.
Fixing your funnel is slower—a site that loads, a checkout with no surprise fees, an email when someone leaves—but it converts more of the traffic you already paid to bring in, and you keep your rate.
Getting people to the site was the expensive part, and you’ve already done it. The rest is making sure they follow through.
To learn more about how we can help you lose fewer hotel bookings, check out our Growth Marketing services.
And to learn about growing your email list, check out our recent Journal post on the topic.
