Price Calendar for Flexible Dates improves conversion opportunity

Bookassist
septiembre 6, 2017
calendar
We analysed flexible dates usage on hundreds of Bookassist hotels, here’s what we found

At ITB Berlin in March this year, Bookassist launched Price Calendar for Flexible Dates, a powerful dynamic interface for browsing hotel rates quickly and effortlessly for up to two years in advance. We recently analysed usage of Price Calendar on hundreds of Bookassist hotels during the summer months and first usage data show that there is a clear uplift in conversion opportunity for Bookassist hotels.

Overall, 21% of visitors who were rejected due to unavailable dates in the “normal” booking process opted to switch to Price Calendar’s flexible dates view to continue their booking. Previously these customers would likely have left the process and been a lost opportunity. Now, they are re-engaging.

Re-engagement of 21% with the booking process

This re-engagement behaviour is particularly strong in resort hotels. For example, for Inchydoney Island Lodge and Spa in Cork, Ireland during our analysis period, 46% of date selection rejections opted to continue booking via Price Calendar’s flexible dates display. For Aquapalace Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic, 40% of potential bookers did so. These are very significant recovered booking opportunities.

In contrast, airport hotels showed the lowest engagement with flexible dates with typically 10% to 15% of visitors who were rejected in the “normal” booking process opting to switch to Price Calendar to continue their booking. City hotels typically sat somewhat in the middle between resorts and airport hotels with engagement of rejected bookers in the 20-25% range, still a very significant opportunity recovery.

This profile of usage is perhaps not surprising, with airport hotel customers typically having no flexibility on dates, while resort customers are far less date sensitive and typically browse around more for good value packages before committing to booking.

Bottom line is that Price Calendar is significantly raising re-engagement with hotel customers online, and is growing direct booking opportunity and conversion.

It pays to be flexible.

Flexible dates has proven to be enormously popular with online customers since its launch and is improving conversion for Bookassist client hotels.

¡Únete a miles de hoteles de éxito que ya usan la tecnología premiada de Bookassist y los servicios de reserva directa.