As weather cools, smart hoteliers prepare to stoke demand and welcome winter guests. From cleaning fireplaces and spicing up menus to creating irresistible packages and promoting winter experiences online, there’s a lot to do to fill rooms this season. Is your online booking engine (OBE) ready?
Your OBE doesn’t just capture bookings—it plays a significant role in convincing lookers to book. Take full advantage of its conversion-boosting features to maximize direct reservations and make this winter your best yet.
WebRezPro’s fully integrated, mobile-friendly OBE makes it easy to capture commission-free bookings year round. Its flexible features enable you to improve conversion rates by instantly adapting to the market and reflecting your property’s new offerings in real time.
Here are some impactful ways to get your booking engine winter ready to drive holiday bookings.
Seasonal photos
From relaxing by the pool to enjoying s’mores by the fire, your property’s stay experience changes with the seasons. Your website should too—including your OBE.
With WebRezPro, you can showcase your property at its coziest this winter with seasonal slideshow photos that display automatically based on set dates. Whether portraying warm room décor or a picture-perfect snowy cabin setting, you don’t have to remember to swap images every year; just set the system to do it for you.
Make sure your cool winter deals don’t go unnoticed! Use display priority settings to highlight special rates and packages so they appear first, drawing attention to seasonal offers.
As well, strikethrough pricing clearly shows discounts, and room and rate availability calendars help guests find the best deal when their dates are flexible. Together, these features make your winter value proposition obvious at a glance.
Add-ons
Offer extras like late check-out, ski passes, or winter welcome baskets during the booking process to let guests customize their stay while driving ancillary revenue.
Built seamlessly into the booking flow, WebRezPro’s reservation options feature allows you to create add-ons in a variety of formats—from menu to checkbox to quantity selections—and add images to better sell your offers. Attach them to specific room and rate types to ensure only relevant promotions are shown to the right guests. You can even set featured reservation options to automatically pop up when the guest arrives at the booking form. Otherwise, guests simply click the add-ons they want (no pushy sales required!).
Reservation options can also be configured with inventory control to automatically track limited items like stationary bikes or mulled wine kits, ensuring your booking engine never oversells your upsells.
Custom room amenities
Shine a spotlight on the amenities that set your property apart. Seasonal touches like heated towel racks, humidifiers, and holiday décor can be included in your OBE within room amenity lists and as search filters.
Custom amenities not only ensure guests are as informed as possible and make room comparisons clearer—they draw attention to your property’s unique selling points.
Close matches & urgency signals
Once school’s out and demand surges, your OBE helps guests avoid disappointment by displaying alternative options and urgency messaging when availability is low.
For example, a rate with a minimum length of stay can be set to appear as a close match for room searches that don’t meet the minimum requirement, giving guests additional options (and encouraging longer stays!).
To help guests make faster decisions so they don’t miss out, the booking engine can be configured to show the number of rooms left for each unit type once availability drops below a set threshold (e.g., when five or fewer units remain).
Automated confirmations
Booking confirmation emails are essential for reassuring guests and preparing them for their stay, but they don’t have to create more work at the front desk! With WebRezPro’s automated email templates, your OBE sends instant confirmations without any staff intervention.
Automatically personalized based on reservation data, confirmation email templates can also be defined by rooms and rates booked. Don’t forget to tailor messaging and images to the season too!
My Reservations guest portal
WebRezPro’s OBE includes a guest portal, My Reservations, where guests sign in to view and manage their bookings, as well as guest agreements, gift vouchers, and reward points. This self-serve reservation hub makes it easy for them to modify or cancel reservations and book new stays under their profile—and allows properties to deliver a personalized, convenient experience that builds loyalty.
The My Reservations portal can also be enabled for group booking organizers, corporate guests, and unit owners, giving all guests the tools they need to self-manage their stays.
Make the most of your online booking engine’s powerful, flexible features to not only take bookings but make bookings this winter. We’d love to show you how WebRezPro helps your property maximize demand and revenue. Contact us for a free, no-obligation demo.
