In many PMS there is the so-called “manager report”. The most important sales figures are reported monthly. The total turnover, lodging turnover, occupancy or the average room price and the turnover per available room (RevPar) are observed with interest and evaluated in comparison to the previous year.
The private hotel industry still shows far too little interest in at least equally important key figures:
1. the number of visitors on your hotel website
2. the number of visitors who start a purchase, i.e. visit your booking software or Internet Booking Engine (key figure: from visitor to potential buyer)
3. the conversion in the Internet Booking Engine (key figure: from interested party to buyer)
Web agencies seem to shun clear key figures
Many web agencies obviously have no interest in presenting these key figures to their customers who have commissioned homepage and possibly even search engine optimization. Yes, they do not even suggest the regular measurement of the marketing investment “homepage”. Customers must actively demand it!
How do you as an entrepreneur get these e-commerce key figures
Number of visitors
If more than 100 people come to your reception or restaurant every day and ask for the price list or menu and nobody books a room or orders a table, you would probably be unsettled. Unfortunately it looks even worse on many homepages. Hundreds or even thousands of visitors of whom the management does not even know and just as unknown is the number of those who also book a room. A simple tracking tool, such as Google Analytics or the also free Matomo (formerly Piwik), can monitor important developments. Google Analytics can also be stored in many web booking engines, so that the number of visitors in the booking engine and the number of bookers can be analyzed in one tool. Once a Google account has been created, the web administrator must simply copy and paste the tracking code into the code of the website.
Number of visitors in the Booking Engine
Good webshops or booking machines show this figure as well as the number of bookings and sales. So if the homepage and the booking software are not connected to a tracking software, the number of visitors can be viewed in the Booking Engine’s reporting system. If your software partner does not currently provide this information, you should request it.
Turnover and number of bookers in the Booking Engine
This conversion (from the prospective customer to the buyer) is a very important key figure. It is comparable to the number of callers in the reservation department to those who receive a confirmation. Only those who regularly evaluate this conversion can work on measures to improve it. Perhaps it is the quality of the room pictures, the rates that the prospective customer has to choose from, the possible payment or guarantee methods that the customer has to choose from…. (only credit card is a typical sales inhibitor in Germany). This key figure can also be compared very well with other hotels.
