Build Trust and Increase Conversions by Displaying Price Comparison Information
A/B test proves that offering customers a price comparison directly on the hotel’s website leads to higher conversion rates, more revenue from direct booking.
Recent studies show that rate-conscious travelers want to know they’re getting the best possible price in a market with many options for booking hotel accommodations. A/B testing recently conducted by Sabre Hospitality Solutions and industry partner Triptease, clearly demonstrated that that offering customers a price comparison during the booking process does, in fact, help build trust and leads to higher conversion rates and more revenue for hoteliers.
Sabre Hospitality Solutions’ Conversion Optimization team ran this A/B test on a group of eight hotels’ websites, comparing the performance of each property’s booking engine both with and without the OTA price comparison display provided by the TripTease Price Check widget. The test was conducted during 3 weeks on 10,554 visits to the eight selected hotel websites. Half of visitors who searched for hotel rooms were shown the TripTease OTA “Price Check” widget during at the availability results step of the booking engine, with prices from leading OTA websites shown alongside the hotel’s direct booking rate.
Visitors who were shown the price comparison had a 12 percent higher look-to-book conversion rate than those who did not. Revenue from direct-booking transactions with Price Check was approximately 24 percent higher than receipts from transactions where no price comparison was shown.
These test results paint a clear picture of the role that trust and up-to-the-minute information play in customers’ decisions to book direct as opposed to choosing another platform. Offering OTA price comparison builds trust during the direct booking process, giving critical information at the exact step that a customer may be uncertain whether an OTA could provide a better price than the direct booking channel.
As hoteliers work to drive traffic to the direct channel, this price comparison builds trust in the results customers find on hotels’ digital properties – especially when this mirrors the real-time results guests expect from search engines and travel review sites like TripAdvisor. This, in turn, increases confidence in booking on days where the ADR is higher, and may also encourage purchases at a higher rate.
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