We partner with hotels to build their brand online, drive direct business to their branded website, capture bookings with world class booking technology, help them optimize their online distribution and ensure they grow their margin per booking.
Nineteen years ago today, a small group of us completed the build of our first online hotel booking system and tentatively put it live for our very first client, a Dublin-based hotel.
We waited, and waited, wondering if it was really working or not, until a satisfying ping on email announced the completion of Bookassist’s first ever booking. A certain Dr Szebesta had booked the hotel at 23:30 on August 11th, 2000.
Every year since then, after millions of direct reservations successfully handled for our hotel clients worldwide, we mark “Szebesta Day” with a company-wide celebration across all our offices in Dublin, Madrid, Rome, Vienna and Prague.
We’ve come a very long way since then and the Booking Engine continues to break new ground. Thanks to all the Bookassist staff down the years that made this journey possible and who continue to make it happen daily, and to our thousands of loyal hotel clients who continue to put their faith in us.
And thanks to Dr Szebesta for lending his name to the celebration!
Hani Krizsany - Business Development Manager at Bookassist
Hani joins the Bookassist team from the 5 star Marker Hotel in Dublin. Her role as Sales Manager at the Marker Hotel spanned over 4 years where she worked closely with travel tech giants Google and Facebook.
Hani brings a wealth of hotel experience to Bookassist with over 13 years in the industry. Previous roles were with the Merrion Hotel and Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin in roles extending F&B, Reservations and Guest Relations.
In her spare time Hani loves to experience Ireland’s unique hotels and culinary offerings.
AHR is the largest and best known hotel trade association in the Czech Republic with over 1.500 members.
The Roadshow is a key opportunity for hoteliers to get on top of current trends, dive deep into best practice and meet with peers, industry consultants and suppliers.
Bookassist’s will be presenting on the topic of Metasearch and Google Adwords.
Commenting on the road show Bookassist Market Manager for the Czech Republic Jaromir Pazout said:
“Metasearch is an increasingly vital part of a hotels digital marketing mix. Our top performing hotels are seeing an increase in direct traffic of up to 100% with Metasearch accounting for more than 40% of overall direct bookings.Hotels need to engage with Metasearch to stay competitive or risk losing this valuable revenue opportunity”
Jaromir and the Czech team will be on the road beginning on the 4th April 2019!
We are pleased to announce that Bookassist Conversion Suite has been awarded the silver award under the ‘software’ category at the 2019 Top Hotel Star Awards! Managing to inch ahead of Siteminder, who took Bronze.
Bookassist Conversion Suite provides hotels with a highly customised responsive website and deeply Integrated booking engine. Designed with conversion in mind, both website and booking engine work seamlessly together to optimise direct sales.
Simple website navigation, fast loading times, and a very clear focus on mobile visitors along with live pricing, availability and special offers pulled directly from the booking engine all work magically together to optimise direct sales potential.
The super easy CMS has a dedicated sales optimisation area to support the direct sales drive and content management and update is a breeze.
Bookassist, The Direct Booking Expert offers solutions that help hoteliers to maximise their direct channel sales. Bookassist Conversion Suite achieves the highest possible conversion rate and guarantees more direct bookings.
A big thank you to all those who voted for Bookassist!
Bookassist is pleased to announce all services for our Polish clients are now handled locally from the Bookassist Polska office in Kraków (see contact details)
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Pictured are (from left to right) Mario Clemente, Market Manager for Bookassist DACH; Alan Threadgold, Bookassist COO; Des O’Mahony, Bookassist CEO & Founder; Joanna Machaj, Bookassist Polska Market Manager and Mirosław Włosik, Grupa HCG Kraków.
Bookassist Polska brings local support for Booking Engine, Web Design, Digital Marketing and Channel Manager services for all Polish clients and provides the same strategic consultancy on growing direct business and optimising margin to all client hotels.
Bookassist also launches its Bookassist Academy in Poland with an upcoming seminar event on “Dynamic revenue management in the hotel industry” to be held April 10 in Kraków. For details of the event, see here.
“We are very excited to be localising services for our Polish clients with this new venture in Kraków”, said Des O’Mahony, Bookassist CEO & Founder. “The direct booking opportunity continues to grow for hotels worldwide, and with the growth in tourism specifically in Poland, it has never been more important for Polish hotels to seize the direct online booking opportunity and grow their margin per booking. We are very confident that Joanna and team will deliver excellent strategic service to our Polish clients to help them achieve real margin growth in the coming years.”
Bookassist’s focus on mobile booking is paying off for its hotel clients with double-digit growth in direct booking revenue generation on mobile year on year.
Figures were presented by Bookassist CEO & Founder Des O’Mahony as part of the company’s ongoing monitoring of the mobile landscape. The keynote presentation was a joint presentation by Google, Bookassist and Travel Tripper on the opening day of the BTO event at Florence on March 20.
Google’s Furio Gianforme painted a picture of a rapidly expanding mobile opportunity in travel, with Generation Z users moving increasingly towards ecommerce and mobile infrastructure improving worldwide to deliver faster content. Steffan Berelowitz of Travel Tripper showed statistics from the USA market highlighting in excess of 50% of traffic to hotels now coming from mobile devices, despite revenue lagging significantly at closer to 25% of all revenue being generated via mobile.
Device versus User-Behaviour Impact
Bookassist figures for its core European markets are part of a series of studies that Bookassist has presented since 2016. Comparing mobile traffic in 2018 to mobile traffic in 2017 across all markets, involving over one thousand hotels and hundreds of thousands of hotel reservations, Des pointed out that there is now an equilibrium being reached between mobile and desktop traffic. While still growing, mobile traffic is inching upwards far less now than two or three years ago. This is likely due to the fact that mobile platforms have now become “stable”, since devices are now relatively uniform, all have large screens and all have good network access. The rapid growth seen in 2015 onwards initially was driven by improving technology that has now become the norm. This device-related change is now less pronounced.
On the other hand, Bookassist figures for revenue generation on mobile in the same period continue to show double-digit percentage growth, with desktop continuing to decline universally. This is likely to be more user-behaviour related. Users are becoming much more comfortable and confident with mobile commerce, and increasing numbers of younger people who already see mobile as the norm are moving into the workforce, into income generation and into online spending patterns. Des proposes that while mobile versus desktop traffic may reach a relative equilibrium, growth in mobile revenue can be expected to continue for some time yet because of this evolving user behaviour.
Voted The World’s Leading Booking Engine Technology. Secure, fast and reliable, constantly updated, delivering the highest booking conversion.
