- Travel & Hospitality
- Web Development
- E-commerce Solutions
- Web Design
Fifteen percent of every room, paid to an intermediary
An independent property fills its rooms reliably and gives up a large share of each booking in commission, because the direct booking experience is worse than the one the intermediary offers. Fixing that is a conversion problem with a very direct financial reading.
Representative engagement. This describes a pattern we build rather than one named client: the situation that produces it, how we approach it, and the range of outcomes that kind of work lands in. Figures are stated as ranges or targets, never as a measured result for a specific customer. Our named client work is on the work index.
- Industry
- Travel & Hospitality
- healthy direct booking share (industry range, not a measured result)
- 30 to 50%
- every channel against the same availability
- One inventory
The problem
Guests route through the channel with the better experience, and for most independent properties that is not the property's own site. Too many steps, a booking widget that behaves like a separate application, and a mobile flow nobody tested on a phone. Availability is the technical constraint underneath. Rooms are sold on several channels against one inventory, and a synchronisation delay is an overbooking, which costs a refund and a review rather than just a room. Rate parity limits the obvious lever too. The property usually cannot simply undercut the intermediary, so the direct channel has to win on experience and on what it can offer that the intermediary cannot.
What we built
A booking flow built for a phone first, with the number of steps treated as the primary metric. Dates, room, guest details, payment. Everything else is either removed or moved to after the booking is confirmed. Availability and rates run through the property management system and channel manager rather than beside them, so one inventory serves every channel and the sync window is small enough not to matter. The direct channel is then given what the intermediary cannot offer: the guest's history, a room preference remembered, a genuine upgrade path at the point of booking. Since the rate cannot be lower, the offer has to be better, and it can be.
What changed
Direct bookings convert better because the direct experience stops being the worse one, and every direct booking is the commission kept rather than paid. The range below is the healthy direct share this pattern is scoped towards rather than a figure we have produced for a named property. The arithmetic that decides whether it is worth doing is straightforward, and it should be run before the work starts.
Built with
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- Stripe
- PostgreSQL
- Cloudflare