The Importance of Direct Sales in the Hotel Sector

Given the situation of the hotel sector around the world, the exercise of promoting direct sales for hotels is elemental and each day it has a growing presence in sales strategies. We’ve had many months to innovate, evolve and look for the best way to promote our products and services to our guests.

What happens if we realize that offering alternatives to the conventional 22-hour service of a hotel room provides us with new clients and higher continuous income? How can we introduce a new service by the hour on the hotelier's own website?

Alternatives to attract customers and to continue to build customer loyalty with new products have been gaining strength in the sector. Digitalization is undoubtedly the most important element to take into account today, as well as promoting direct sales through the main channels of your hotel, which will help to sell more.

Within the framework of the unprecedented crisis that the industry is suffering, BYHOURS accelerated a digitalization process that had been on our roadmap for some time in order to support the hotel sector and offer a new alternative to increase direct sales.

Until now, we have been an intermediary between the hotel and the client, targeting the B2C segment. Now, we are taking a step forward in the digitization of the sector by creating “BYHOURS DIRECT,” a new line of business. This new option is characterized by implementing a SaaS that allows hotels to make their rooms and meeting rooms available to the client by the hour, with total flexibility and from their own website.

Previously, the commercialization of an hourly room could only be done through the BYHOURS website or app. Now, it can also be done on the website of those hotels that decide to acquire this tool.

BYHOURS DIRECT's integral management software presents two modules for the hotelier: the sale of the inventory of rooms and/or that of the meeting rooms by the hour.

On the one hand, it offers the incorporation of the software, created 100 percent by BYHOURS, to sell the rooms in packs of 3, 6 or 12 hours from the hotel's own website. This is a very important part of the direct sales strategy. The second module provides the incorporation of the software for the sale of the meeting rooms by the hour, without being subject to any hourly pack. In this context, BYHOURS DIRECT

offers a radical change for the industry and a new model in the market that until now was non-existent for the hotelier.

This is due to the fact that in the COVID era, the demand for meeting rooms for teleworking or video conferencing has increased noticeably and to date, hotels haven’t offer this type of service on their own web channel.

As I mentioned, with BYHOURS DIRECT we can help hotels increase their much-desired direct sales. The hotelier must adapt to the new needs of the client and increase the range of products offered on its website in order to retain its customers and build loyalty.

Undoubtedly, incorporating new ways of selling into your hotel’s strategy and having different sales channels, both your own and that of others, where you can offer your guest rooms, including hourly, and meeting rooms alongside your added value in services and experiences are essential for the new post-COVID era in the tourism sector.