Hotels have taken advantage of Black Friday and bargain hunting guests in a record day for direct bookings

Whilst many consumers are on the hunt for discounted consumer electronics, toys or clothes, Black Friday has yielded phenomenal results for hotels catering to deal-seeking guests.

Traditionally the chance for U.S. brick-and-mortar retailers to offer deals and discounts on a day that marks the official start of the holiday shopping period, Black Friday has grown over the past 2 decades to encompass businesses all over the world in almost an entire week of unmissable discounts, bargain hunting and purchasing frenzies.

As retailers around the world continue to expand their e-commerce presence, many Black Friday deals have also migrated online, allowing customers to skip the queues and cold November mornings and shop for deals from around the world, all from the comfort of their homes. The online expansion has been further bolstered by the unstoppable growth of Cyber Monday – the Monday after U.S. Thanksgiving that is entirely dedicated to online deals. According to Adobe Digital Insights, 2017’s Cyber Monday is the biggest day in U.S. online retail history, with retailers raking in USD$6.59 billion – up 16.8% from the last year’s record holder.

Black Friday Bookings

But what does this mean for hotels? Quite a lot actually. The retail madness of Black Friday has had a definitive halo effect for online bookings too – as consumers increasingly purchase more online each year, it seems their expectation of Black Friday savings and bargains extends to the travel industry too.

On average, hotels that used Hotelchamp to run Black Friday offers on their direct channel over the weekend saw an average +105% increase in their website conversion rate when compared with the weekend before. This phenomenal boost in conversion saw an overall +144.44% increase in transactions over the same period, providing retailers with a +47.47% increase in direct revenue!By utilising Hotelchamp tools to showcase time-limited or unmissable Black Friday offers, many hotels were able to successfully convert guests looking to save big on online purchases – hotel bookings included.

In Focus: Hotel ICON

To emphasise the limited time nature of their Black Friday offer, Hong Kong’s Hotel ICON utilised a flash sale complete with live countdown to drive urgency. This incredible deal caught the eye of Black Friday bargain hunters and at the end of their 7 day Black Friday sale, Hotel ICON saw a +166% increase in their conversion rate, resulting in a +178% increase in revenue compared with the 7 day period immediately prior.

So What’s Next?

The real lesson here for the savvy hotelier is that the expectations of website visitors continue to be influenced by their e-commerce experiences. The features, UX and access to relevant information that makes for a good e-commerce experience is becoming more crucial for hoteliers who want to maintain a good conversion rate. Hotelchamp’s comprehensive toolkit provides hotels with a number of ways to keep their hotel website up-to-date with a range of proven e-marketing techniques and approaches. By looking to the e-commerce world, it’s best practices and, as Black Friday has shown us, its trends – the savvy hotelier can provide a superior booking process that convinces more of their web traffic to book direct.

So, the only question that’s left is: what is your hotel doing for the Boxing Day Sales?