The importance of quality static hotel content for OTAs

Have you noticed a dip in your booking numbers?  

Are your conversion rates dropping?  

This can be a challenge for any travel company. Several factors can disrupt your sales pipeline, but today we will focus on the hotel content. Today, every single detail of the hotel plays a crucial role in the hotel booking process. As we explained in our previous blogs, hotel content is the information revolving around the hotel property. It can include hotel name, location, address, room descriptions, bed types, etc.  

Today, travel shoppers are informed and do good research before booking their stay options. And in their research, hotel content influences their purchase decision. Listing accurate hotel information is a gateway to drive better conversions. In this blog, we will explain the fundamentals of hotel content and its impact on OTAs. 

Two types of hotel content 

Every hotel listing has two types of content. They can be broadly divided as 

• Dynamic content 
• Static content 

Dynamic content 

Dynamic hotel content is information that changes frequently. The content includes  

• Room rates  
• Room availability 

Based on the availability of the rooms and hotel promotions during peak season, this dynamic content needs to be updated regularly, sometimes even multiple times in a day.  

Static hotel content 

Static content is everything apart from room rates that can sell a hotel or resort. Right from hotel descriptive content to visual content, everything falls under static content. Static content are 

• Hotel name 
• Hotel address 
• Hotel location 
• Hotel type 
• Hotel star rating 
• Room images 
• Amenities list 
• Hotel policies (check-in check out, parking, pet friendly) 

Most of the details mentioned above are permanent, but content such as amenities, and policies change over time or seasonally. And both dynamic and static content must be accurate and up-to-date, showcasing the hotel property’s actual pictures. Now let’s understand how quality content can transform the customer booking experience for OTAs. 

The rising need for quality static hotel content 

Picture this: A travel shopper has visited your website to search for a suite with a private pool. He discovers the desired hotel he is looking for isn’t displayed on your platform. In this scenario, it wouldn’t take the shopper to switch from your platform to the next.  

What went wrong? 

Your platform does not have up-to-date content or accurate information, which leads to a lost booking deal. This mainly occurs when an OTA works in a multi-supplier environment where hotel data is unverified and cluttered. To avoid just scenarios, we recommend updating your platform with accurate and quality content to drive better booking volumes.  

To date, dynamic content has been given major focus because it defines the revenue of any travel business. But it’s your static content that powers whether the traveler will view the hotel or not. If a particular hotel’s static content has missing information, it might not display in the search results and, unfortunately, result in a dip in conversion.  

Also, these days travel shoppers want specific information such as if the hotel has sustainability certification, pet-friendly property, room-specific facilities such as kitchen and workspace, if your platform showcases vacation rental properties, etc. Along with accurate hotel content, OTAs must have specific attributes that cater to the customer’s needs. 

To sum up, when your platform doesn’t showcase accurate static hotel content, it results in 

• Poor customer satisfaction 
• Lower conversion rates 
• Lost revenue
• Dip in room occupancy volume 

Conclusion 

Every OTA has more than 100,000 properties listed on its platform. It can be time-consuming to manually identify if each property has accurate and detailed information. That’s why we suggest partnering with technology companies that leverage automated solutions to solve content challenges. Vervotech’s Curated Content solution, powered by AI/ML, delivers curated content with 99% accuracy. We use multiple parameters to identify and list over 40 attributes on our client’s platform. Also, our robust manual content analyst team performs intensive research to deliver accurate curated content both descriptive and visual. We even offer multilingual content from suppliers, helping our clients expand their foothold in different markets. What sets us apart? We provide the highest mapping accuracy that reduces the go-to-market time for our clients. 

Contact us if you want your platform to display content-rich products with premium visuals. Our product warrants an enhanced booking experience and drives better conversion rates.