Why & How to Invest in Pre-arrival Bookings

Travelers are buzzing with excitement to go on holiday again, perhaps more than ever, since the start of the pandemic. Of course, a lot has changed. The idea that the guest experience starts with the arrival at the property is no longer as true as it once was. The customer journey kicks-off pre-trip, starting with the reservation and includes “the interaction between a guest and a hotel before the guest arrives at the hotel” as a whole.

The numbers speak for themselves – Triparound customers have already generated €1,136,701 during January and February 2022 through our intuitive travel planning solution and a 10x increase in pre-arrival guest spending compared to January and February of 2021!

Although travelers must now think about more than just airfare and accommodation, careful travel planning doesn’t have to turn down the excitement. Quite the opposite –  “savoring an upcoming experience heightens the enjoyment of the actual experience”.

This raises the question, what does this shift mean for the modern travel professional? In two simple words – pre-arrival bookings! Hoteliers, property owners, vacation rental management companies, travel professionals, and guests alike are hopping on the trend that is here to stay.

So, why are pre-arrival bookings important?

Generating experience & service bookings with pre-arrival sign-ups can only create positive outcomes for your travel business. Here are the top ones:

1. Make your customer feel at ease

With the Coronavirus pandemic, it is more important than ever for travelers to have a clear plan for their getaway before arriving at the destination. By making experiences and key information easily accessible to customers, they can plan their trip before getting to the property, ensuring a stress-free vacation.

2. Planning ahead

When you know exactly what your customers expect from their stay before arrival, your team can prepare and ensure that bookings run smoothly. What is more, staff have the right information to better upsell activities during-stay. For example, if yoga lessons are popular at your property you may wish to bring on another instructor and increase availability.

3. Capture revenue

By implementing the right pre-arrival selling tactics, you can increase guest spending beyond the room booking. In this way, you leverage untapped revenue streams coming directly from your ancillary offerings, even at the early stages of the guest booking journey.

4. Top the competition

Experiential travel is on the rise for 2022, so marketing your ancillary offerings clearly on your website and socials will give you a major boost over the competition.

For instance, sporty travelers may be more keen to book your property if they see that you offer water sports and nature excursions. Imagine your prospective guest’s excitement if these activities are also bookable online.

Here are a few tips and tricks on how to leverage this overlooked profitable opportunity.

4 Ways to Streamline the Pre-Arrival Guest Experience

The Window to Your Business

Technology can bring hoteliers and travelers together in an instant. That means the accommodation experience starts from the moment your guest enters your website.

With travel consumer preferences shifting to direct booking, your website becomes a crucial part of your business. Triparound gives you control to receive, make and manage bookings online based on live availability and real-time data.

As experiential travel continues to be on the rise, your customers are looking for that something extra to make their holidays unforgettable. Allowing your guest to book experiences and services directly through your website makes your property more appealing while boosting guest spending from the very first moment.

Beautiful images, the right descriptions, and accessible booking methods empowering guests to make experience reservations directly through your website are simple elements that make your business stand out from the crowd. The added perk is that your future guests can book from anywhere in the world, at any time.

With Triparound, you can easily empower guests to pre-book based on live availability, easily managed by your staff with our intuitive back-office platform. With the use of Book Now buttons across your website, and the Guest Web App, giving your customers control of their experience has never been easier.

Make it Personal

Creating and building guest relationships is essential to fostering repeat business and capturing the revenue potential of each customer. OTAs facilitate access to room bookings; however, they can often feel impersonal. As a seasoned travel professional, this is where you can take advantage of your expertise and give guests your property’s personal touch even before arrival – without the hassle, of course.

You may have made hand-selected activities available on your website that are in line with your customers’ preferences. Maybe you have taken some extra time to create the perfect email to showcase your products, which are now bookable online for guests to register their interest before their stay.

These special touches make your business stand out, and Triparound is here to support your efforts. Our experiences booking management software supports you with marketing capabilities to upsell your offerings.

Guests can register their interest across the full range of your products, pre-arrival and based on real-time data. You can create tailored marketing emails , making communications feel more personalized than ever. More importantly, with streamlined processes and automated confirmations, your staff has more quality time to spend with guests.

Understand Your Customers

Creating the right pre-arrival booking experience for your guests can help you capture important information to create the best customer experience before and during their stay.

When an ancillary booking is made using the Triparound platform, widgets or Guest Web App, a corresponding guest profile is created and updated with every subsequent reservation. In this way, when customers book experiences and services before their arrival, you can better target their preferences during-stay, highlighting offerings you already know they will love.

Furthermore, the right reporting tools are the key to unlocking an in-depth understanding of your customers and maximizing profits for your business – all while easily offering bespoke service.

Automation is Key

Simplifying booking processes for in-house and third-party experiences and services, especially without direct access to the guest on the property when the booking is made, can be a challenge.

By automating reservation management you can easily help enhance and streamline the pre-arrival experience. Travelers and staff alike will appreciate the simplicity of the booking journey and communication right away, and techy guests will love the accessibility to experiences at their fingertips.

Automated confirmation emails and swift communication of booking status changes eliminate the stress of manual reservation management. The right back-office software empowering your team with automation capabilities, means more quality time to spend with your guests already at the property, while better preparing for future guests before they arrive.

Is this the opportunity you’ve been looking for?

Managing ancillary bookings through manual emails and lengthy phone calls can be very overwhelming. This is even more true when your efforts to increase your pre-arrival registrations start to pay off and you are now having to deal with bookings for current and future customers. With traditional tools this may mean double booking numbers, but also double the work. Therefore, finding the right experiences management software for your business is essential.

Triparound helps you handle pre-arrival and during-stay ancillary bookings at the click of a button. You can access all information in one place and quickly understand future booking volumes. You can easily access detailed information for each booking, including participant and supplier information. Whether your guest has arrived on the property or not, their experience booking information is available to your team at any time, empowering them to better cater to the guest’s needs.

You have already done the work and carefully hand-picked the right experiences to offer your guests. Now, let Triparound do the work for you. With our intuitive ancillary booking management software, you can capture revenue like never before. Benefit from:

• Experiences & services bookable online directly through your website
• Live ancillary offering availability
• Automated communications with guests & suppliers
• Intelligent marketing & reporting functionalities for targeted upselling