Competition in the hotel, restaurant, and travel industries is getting more intense than ever with so many online booking options available to customers. Forbes reports that the number of online bookings has more than doubled in the last 10 years and is expected to grow even further due to the pandemic. While it can result in more business opportunities and increase revenue size, this sudden growth spurt can make it even more challenging for an organization to stand out in a crowded industry.
One way for an organization to differentiate itself from competitors is knowing how to create an online booking system to ensure better customer experiences. By delivering exceptional customer experiences, businesses can build a strong relationship with their target niche and drive loyalty and higher retention rates in today’s uncertain climate. In this article, we’ll outline several online booking practices and tips on how to motivate employees to deliver positive customer experiences.
1. Create an Easy Registration Process
The impact of online booking system in your business cannot be understated. With an online booking system, you can increase bookings and keep your business thriving. However, that can be challenging if your registration process is complex and requires customers to fill up a lot of information before they can access your service packages. By creating an easy registration process, you can eliminate customer frustration and ensure a smooth experience, which can ultimately contribute to increased bookings.
Start evaluating your existing registration process and determine how site visitors turn into customers. Often, you may not even realize how many registration conversions you are losing until you’ve experienced the entire process. It is also important that you only gather data that you will need to process bookings to reduce customer abandonment.
2. Reduce or Personalize Advertisements on Payment Pages
Nothing is as disappointing as losing a customer because of the advertisements that appear in the payment page of an online booking app. While advertisements are a great way to introduce your other service packages, it can also annoy customers and result in them leaving and trying other options. What makes this even more frustrating is that these annoyed customers usually turn to your competitors after leaving your site.
That said, you should reduce the frequency of ads in payment pages to avoid creeping out customers and increase the likelihood of them to push through with the booking. You may also want to consider showing advertisements that are personalized to customer preferences to make them less-intrusive. Personalization also allows you to create ad content that would resonate better and leave a special memory with your customers.
3. Allow Booking Cancellation
Cancelled flights and hotel bookings are relatively common in the pandemic era. Statistics reveal that the average of cancellation rates is pegged at 40%. However, it is not uncommon for hotel and travel businesses to not allow booking cancellations for the fear of missed revenue.
While a strict booking policy is one way to stave off joy reservers, not offering a flexible cancellation option can ultimately backfire and may result in your business getting a bad rap from legitimate customers. By having a flexible cancellation policy, you can preserve your customer relationships and encourage another booking. A rule of thumb is to set a reasonable time frame for cancellations to not only improve the customer experience but also have enough time to restructure your plans.
4. State Refund Policies Clearly
The benefits of establishing a clear refund policy are too hard to ignore in today’s consumer-driven business environment. Without a clear policy, you run the risk of suffering poor planning and loss of revenue. On the flip side, stating refund policies clearly allows you to avoid the situation where the customers are disappointed because they were unaware of the rule while booking.
A clear refund policy also takes out the emotion of a difficult decision when you choose to decline a particular refund. When creating a refund policy, it is crucial that you define the condition of refunds to avoid the risk of customers taking advantage of your business. You should also be upfront about any reservation or other additional costs incurred to create customer experiences built on trust and loyalty.
5. Use the Right Online Booking Platform
There is only so much a business can do to provide better customer experiences. As technology evolves, more customers now expect travel and hotel businesses to be available online 24/7. One way to keep up with these evolving needs is taking advantage of the best online booking system that allows customers to reserve a restaurant table or a hotel room without having to wait until they can get a hold of you.
The benefits of reservation system is that it allows your guests to book, pay and sign required documents before immediately getting a booking confirmation message in their inbox immediately. This added convenience will not only be beneficial to your customers but also helps your business stay organized and cut workload in half. Without data entry and manual tasks, you can focus even more in creating unique service packages that improve the customer experience.
Achieving Better Customer Experience through Online Booking
Ensuring better customer experiences is no longer an option to achieve success in a cutthroat hotel, restaurant and travel industries. Therefore, businesses must take advantage of powerful online booking systems like Datelist to increase bookings and achieve value-added consumer experiences. Datelist, which is packed with powerful features such as online booking, reminders, and payment collection, offers a free package but users interested in additional functionalities can opt for the Basic and Premium plans.