Hotel & Motel Owners: Get more reservations by listing your property on these online booking sites.

ho·te·lier – noun - a person who owns or manages a hotel.

Is that you? If it is, you need to pay close attention to this post. 

Let me ask you, what’s your main responsibility as a hotel owner or manager? Yes, ensuring your guests have a safe, clean, and enjoyable stay is the obvious answer. But just between us, what’s the  one thing that really keeps you awake at night and turns your hair various shades of grey?  That’s right…that big neon vacancy sign hanging out front. It can be really difficult to get the “NO” part of that sign to light up. It’s actually not as hard as you think it is, follow along and I’ll explain.

OK, so how do I achieve no-vacancy if it’s so easy?

I thought you’d never ask! Simple, list your hotel with all the major online booking sites. Like, all of them. The more you list, the more potential eyeballs are going to come across your hotel or motel. This isn’t even advice that you can take or leave, this is something that must be done if you want to have a successful accommodation business. 

Where should I list my property?

Great question! That’s the entire premise of this post, I’ve compiled a list of the best places to list your property to help achieve maximum occupancy at your hotel / motel. The sites below represent over 90% of online English-speaking booking interactions. That’s right, if someone is online looking for a hotel, the chances they land on one of the sites below is higher than 90%. It’s not only in your best interest to get listed on these platforms, it is of upmost importance and the success of your business depends on it. 

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OK cool, have any tips for me before I start listing?

Absolutely!

1. Photos. Lots of photos. If you have the budget for it, hire yourself a professional photographer and get it done right. Nothing is more of a turn-off when looking for a hotel than to see grainy, blurry, or photos taken at weird angles. You have to put your best foot forward and make a good initial impression. 
2. Videos. If you can, get yourself a professional video created. The same person you hire to take your professional photos can likely also do your videos. If not, they can certainly give you a referral. 
3. Done picture/video. This can be a great idea for hotels that have a large grounds area with playgrounds, pools, basketball courts, ETC. The idea is to capture the entire property and all the cool amenities and features inside a single image or video. Something to grab their attention. You ever seen a hotel online using a drone image as their default picture and it looks like a game of SimCity? That’s the look you’re going for. 
4. Hotel Info. Be sure you don’t skimp on the hotel description / summary. Don’t give it a sentence or two. Be passionate about it, sell it. Let the person reading it know that this hotel isn’t going to disappoint them. If you’re bad at writing, go over to Fiverr and find yourself a writer. You can get a beefy and professional hotel description created for under $200.
5. Amenities. Make you list ALL your amenities. If you have it, list it. The more amenities you list, the better you stand out from your competitors across the street. Give the people a reason for wanting to book at your hotel. No amenity is too small. Everyone is looking for something specific. Have an icemaker on each floor? To most people it means nothing, but to some people it means everything and could mean the difference between earning that person’s business or not. Accept pit bulls while everyone else in town doesn’t? You just secured all the pit bull owners business! List everything you have to offer!
6. Prices. Don’t forget, you’re competing with everyone around you. Be as aggressive as you can with the pricing. Unless you’re a high-end boutique hotel, then sometimes it pays to go the opposite way on this. But for most hotels, lower prices are going to get you more bookings. Keep in mind, people usually organize the hotel results by distance and price. Not much you can do about distance, but if you do your pricing correctly, you can ensure you show up at the top of the search results for your area. 

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Engine.com – https://engine.com/partner-hub

Primary type of users: Business travelers, large group bookings, and 30+ day hotel stays.

Cost: Free to list. Pare also available.

Traffic / Users: 75,000 active business accounts per month. 

Engine is a booking platform made specifically for business travelers, long-term stays, and large group bookings of 9+ rooms.  There isn’t much difference between us and your typical hotel booking site except our hotels and prices are behind a login. Unfortunately, because of our exclusive business and long-term prices, we are contractually barred from showing prices publicly. 

Engine has over 750,000 hotel partners around the world and 75,000 active business users per month. If you’re interested in group bookings or bookings from professionals, this is a great place to list your property. 

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Google.com - https://travel.google/partners/hotels/get-started/

Primary type of users: Public, business, groups (pretty much everyone you can imagine)

Cost: Free to list.

Traffic / Users: It’s estimated that Google is responsible, either directly or indirectly, for as much as 65% of online hotel bookings. 

Google needs NO introduction. Especially when we’re discussing hotels. If you’ve ever searched for a hotel on Google, you’ve for sure noticed the Google Hotel Pack, it’s everywhere. If you want to get listed on there and start getting reviews, this is how you do it. Every hotel NEEDS to be on here, it’s really a must-do. I placed Engine.com at the top of this list, but between you and I, Google is by far the most important place to list your hotel. Don’t think about it, just do it.  

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Booking.com - https://account.booking.com/register

Primary type of users: Public, business, groups (pretty much everyone you can imagine)

Cost: Free to list / 10% and 25% commission fee. 

Booking.com is another behemoth of the online hotel booking world, as their domain name suggests. Booking is a global platform, operating in more than 200 different countries around the globe. If you’re serious about filling your rooms, get yourself listed here. 

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Agoda.com - https://ycs.agoda.com/mldc/en-us/public/signup?propertyType=2

Cost: Free to list

Agoda is an online travel agency offering discount rates on lodging, flights, and car rentals. The company operates in more than 35 countries and territories. Agoda caters to both public and business travelers. Agoda is owned by Booking Holdings (Booking.com).  The site receives nearly 100 million users each month. The site is most popular in Asian countries but also generates heavy traffic via North American users.

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Trip Advisor - https://www.tripadvisor.com/Owners

Cost: Free for basic listings. Also has premium listing options available.

Next on the list is Trip Advisor, these guys have been around a long time and you’ve most likely visited their site at some point in the past. Receiving over 100 million visitors per month, Trip Advisor is one of the largest booking sites on our list and definitely someplace you should list your hotel if you want more bookings. 

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Trivago.com - https://company.trivago.com/get-listed/

Cost: Free to list. Commissions on each booking.

Traffic / Users: 2.5m visitors per month +/-

I can still remember those Trivago commercials that ran on TV some years back. Seemed like every other commercial had one of their ads running with Tim Williams When it comes to online bookings, Trivago is a fairly large player. Receiving around 2.5 – 3 million visitors per month. Not listing on Trivago isn’t going to cripple your hotel revenue, but it’s probably not going to buy you a new Mercedes, either. It’s free to list, so I’d say it’s worth your time to at least give it a shot and see how it pans out.

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Expedia.com - https://stage-publish.welcome.expediagroup.com/en

Cost: Free to list. Commissions on bookings range between 10% - 30%.

Traffic / Users: 85m global monthly website visitors.

Expedia is a big one. Commanding over 2 billion pageviews per month across their various properties from 86m unique website visitors. Expedia is the second largest booking platform in the world, just behind Booking.com. Expedia also has “TravelAds” which allows you to buy PPC ads on their site which could further pad your booking numbers. 

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Kayak.com - https://www.kayak.com/hotelowner

Cost: Free to list.

Traffic / Users: Around 35m unique website visitors per month, with an average session lasting over 7 minutes!

Kayak is a metasearch engine for not only hotel rooms but also for plane tickets, vacation packages, and rental cars. The site itself doesn’t release traffic or user data, but the best estimates around the web say that the site gets around 30 million unique visitors per month, mostly from North America. Kayak has very strong brand recognition and it makes sense to list here, especially because it doesn’t cost anything. 

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