In Membership, Opportunities, Bristol

We are pleased to offer our members a number of different opportunities to receive real time accommodation bookings through the Visit Bristol website.

In 2018 VisitBristol.co.uk exceeded 3m sessions and the accommodation listings and section had over 360,000 pageviews. We are improving the useability and content on the accommodation section and promoting this section across our homepage, social media channels, regular consumer newsletter and content schedule in blogs and press releases.

We have also re-introduced the option for users to book their accommodation via VisitBristol.co.uk, whilst also retaining as much flexibility and ease for our member businesses to capture bookings. Being able to show prices and availability whilst browsing the Visit Bristol website greatly reduces the chances of losing the inspiration to book immediately. The process to add these options is simple and virtually all are at no extra cost to you.

How it works:

Once a user clicks on a price/availability link on your listing they are taken directly to the third party booking website and the transaction is made there. No transactions take place on the Visit Bristol platform. You will not be able to identify any of the bookings made that began with the link on VisitBristol.co.uk but these will be recorded in our own systems. Visit Bristol then receive some of the commission that the booking engine claims from the booking value. You won’t notice any difference in the way you receive bookings and revenue and there is no extra commission that you need to pay over and above what you have already negotiated with each platform.

There is also no need to update availability with Visit Bristol, as this is automatically drawn from the third-party platforms.

You can pick and choose which booking platforms appear against your accommodation listing on the Visit Bristol website. Options include:

  • HotelPlanner

We can offer a HotelPlanner booking integration. If the booking originates from our website, VisitBristol will receive a percentage of the commission charged to reinvest back into more marketing activity to encourage visitors to the city.

You can see how it displays and works here

  • Online Travel Agents

You also have the option to add some of the biggest and well-known Online Travel Agents (Expedia, Late Rooms or Booking.com) as a booking option on your listing and in the availability search. You can pick and choose which ones you would like to add and can have multiple listed. You can list the OTAs alongside Hotelplanner (above) as further options for the user. As above, Visit Bristol receives a percentage of the commission directly from the OTA, you won’t notice any difference, but the income generated will be reinvested in the marketing of the destination.

You can see how it displays and works here

Both of the above options are very quick to turn on and you could be receiving bookings this way within a few days.

  • Guestlink

Guestlink is a dedicated tool for integrating third-party Property Management Systems (PMS).   The Guestlink+ Connect solution is already used to integrate availability from 17 separate PMS platforms:

  • Availpro
  • Beds24
  • CampManager
  • Caterbook
  • Direct Room Sales
  • FreeToBook
  • Guestline
  • iBex
  • Inn Style
  • Parity Rate
  • Queensborough
  • Rategain
  • Rate Tiger
  • RMS
  • RDX Channel Manager
  • SiteMinder
  • Supercontrol
  • Yield Partner

If you would like to display your availability and enable bookings through Visit Bristol via any of these PMS then you will need to contact the Guestlink team to register to use the Guestlink Connect service at £5 a month or £50 a year +VAT. 

Guestlink can be contacted on:

Please contact us for more information on how this option works.

Special offers and packages

Don’t forget that special offers or packages can still be listed for members at no additional cost which then direct back to you at 0% commission and you will still have the direct link to your own website.

These do not need to be exclusive to VisitBristol.co.uk

If you are interested in switching on any of the accommodation booking options, or if you have any questions please get in touch with Faye Batchelor or Laura Valentine.

Related

0 Comments

Comments

Comments are disabled for this post.