SiteMinder has partnered with the travel industry’s digital marketing leaders to open up the full direct booking opportunity for its more than 32,000 hotel customers. The partnerships form part of Plug-in Apps – an extension of the SiteMinder Booking Engine – which brings digital marketing to the hands of hoteliers for the first time and allows them to build their own technology stack.
Plug-in Apps comprise best-of-breed applications in digital marketing, remarketing, price comparison, chatbots, loyalty, upselling and reviews, including Sojern, Spain-headquartered companies The Hotels Network and 123compare.me, and Portugal-headquartered HiJiffy. Their integration, which follows the 33 per cent growth in direct reservations that SiteMinder saw through its hotel commerce platform during the first half of this year, when compared to the same period in 2019, will support hotels in enhancing the booking journey of their guests and driving conversions.
Already, the SiteMinder Booking Engine produces an average return on investment of 56x for users globally.
“At THN, we believe hotels can benefit greatly from having access to integrated hotel technology, which allows them to move away from fragmented systems and work more efficiently,” says Juanjo Rodriguez, CEO at The Hotels Network, which uses price comparisons, reviews and machine learning to predict online user behaviour and then personalise messages and offers for users. “Through our integration with SiteMinder, hoteliers can now easily access our free BenchDirect solution to benchmark their direct channel performance, as well as our innovative personalization technology to drive more direct revenue.”
“In the United States and Europe, travel has come roaring back from pandemic lows, and we see a similar trend starting around the world in key markets like Latin America,” says Noreen Henry, Chief Revenue Officer at Sojern, a digital marketing provider powered by artificial intelligence and traveller intent data. “Now is the time for hotels to ‘ride the wave’ of recovery by using real-time travel data and multichannel marketing designed to convert. By integrating Sojern’s world-class programmatic advertising solutions with SiteMinder, hotels can effortlessly reach travelers searching for a place to stay, drive them to book direct, and then track and measure success.”
SiteMinder’s 2021 global consumer research, The Dynamic Traveler: A New Era of Hotel Guest, revealed that an average of 39 per cent of travelers globally expect to arrange their next trip directly with the accommodation venue, compared to 36% in 2020. At least 4-in-5 travelers are very supportive (14.88 per cent), supportive (39.19 per cent) or indifferent (28.09 per cent) about hotels using their personal data to better their stay.
“Direct bookings are loved by guests and hotels alike,” says Inga Latham, Chief Product Officer at SiteMinder. “Through Plug-in Apps, hotels can now use the most relevant technology solutions that offer high returns and meet their guests’ expectations, minimize friction at every stage of the booking journey and bring efficiencies, without having to worry about how they will integrate with their existing systems. Importantly, these solutions offer hotels greater potential for revenue and control of the guest experience.”
The addition of Plug-in Apps to SiteMinder’s platform brings the size of SiteMinder’s partner ecosystem to more than 1350, encompassing distribution channels, property management systems, hotel applications and hotel consultants.
