The days are growing longer, with sunlight lingering outside our windows and nature slowly awakening from its winter rest. But before we fully immerse ourselves in spring walks, cycling trips and other seasonal pleasures, let’s take a moment to see what’s new in the world of GuestSage.
How to properly configure a booking engine to increase direct hotel sales
Many Hoteliers choose to invest in a hotel website and booking engine with the expectation of quickly increasing direct reservations. In reality, however, this is only the first step on the journey.
The real challenges often begin at the configuration stage. Inconsistent room naming, underdeveloped descriptions, unclear rate plans or incorrectly set booking policies can effectively discourage potential guests, often at the very moment they are browsing your offer.
In her latest article, Małgorzata Wojciechowska walks you step by step through how to organize these key elements to significantly improve your website’s conversion rate. You will learn, among other things:
- How room names influence first impressions and guests’ purchasing decisions
- Which elements make a room description truly sell the stay
- How to structure rate plans so they are clear and easy to compare
- Why poorly configured booking policies can reduce the attractiveness of your offer
- How to effectively use discounts and promotions to increase the share of direct bookings
Sell vouchers directly through your hotel website
We have expanded the AI Booking Engine with a new feature - the first version of vouchers. For now you can use them to sell additional services, such as SPA offers. Guests can purchase a voucher online and then redeem it at a selected time or give it as a gift.
What are the benefits of vouchers?
- Additional revenue: generate income beyond room bookings
- Better visibility for add-on services: more effectively promote your SPA, treatments and other amenities
- Easy to use: customer receives the voucher by email along with a redemption code
The voucher feature is available in the GuestSage extranet under Prices and availability > Vouchers.
This is where you define the voucher value, description, and other parameters, and then publish it on your website as a dedicated tab. The guest completes the purchase online, receives the voucher via email, and can redeem it directly at your property.
Additionally, your front desk team can create and redeem vouchers directly within the GuestSage extranet, opening up further opportunities for on-site upselling.
This is the first version of the feature. In upcoming updates, we plan to further develop it, including integration of vouchers with the online booking process.
New events feature in Price Recommender
Managing your hotel’s pricing strategy shouldn’t rely solely on seasonality analysis. Equally important are local events such as trade fairs, concerts, holidays or conferences that can significantly influence demand.
That’s why we’ve introduced the Events feature in Price Recommender. This solution automatically collects and analyzes information about events in the locations you choose.
At the heart of this process is a dedicated AI agent that scans the internet daily to identify events in your area. It then evaluates their potential impact on occupancy, taking into account factors such as:
- Expected number of attendees
- Likelihood of attracting guests from outside the region
- Distance from your hotel
- Duration of the event
Based on this analysis, the system independently determines the significance of each event and highlights the dates when you can expect increased demand. These insights are automatically incorporated into your pricing recommendations.
Additionally, you gain access to detailed information about each event, including its nature, description, location, and scale. This allows you to better assess whether a particular event is likely to translate into tangible results for your property.
Support with implementation
If you are using Price Recommender SMART or PRO and would like to activate the Events feature, please contact our GuestSage technical support team at: support@guestsage.com.
We’ll guide you step by step through the entire implementation process.
Best Rate Guarantee feature in AI Booking Engine
At the time of writing this text, the Best Rate Guarantee feature is not yet available. However, its rollout is just a few days away so I hope you’ll forgive this small leap ahead.
If you’ve been following our work for some time, you already know how much importance we place on dynamic pricing management within your property. At the same time, booking platforms are further intensifying this dynamic by applying their own discounts and loyalty programs. In practice, this often means that guests can find lower rates on OTAs than on your hotel’s website, directly impacting your revenue.
That’s exactly why we are introducing the Best Rate Guarantee feature in AI Booking Engine. This solution acts as an intelligent guardian of your pricing strategy. Several times a day, it analyzes your property’s rates across booking platforms.
Whenever discrepancies are detected, the system automatically adjusts prices in your booking engine to maintain competitiveness. The entire process takes into account active discounts as well as the operational logic of the AI Booking Engine.
