WPH CloudHotelier is an atypical provider that does not fit in with the approaches of many players in the hotel sector. Here are some keys to our philosophy and values.
It is very common for our competitors to get very upset when an important client decides to work with us instead of with them. In this post we are going to develop some of the key reasons why clients decide to work with us, keys that our competitors often fail to understand.
A provider without the guarantees of a multinational?
We started the development of the first version of the hotel booking system in 2008, 10 years ago, i.e. when Booking.com was still faxing bookings to hotels. We replaced Travelclick's first iHotelier in 2011, with direct bookings increasing from a few thousand euros to several million in a very short time. Some multinationals didn't even exist back then.
For almost 10 years we have been a very local company, working exclusively in Menorca, yet around 60% of the island's hotels rely on our solutions. Overall we have processed some 30 million euros in direct bookings in the last year. When we went outside the island and looked at data from other hotels, we realised that none of them had the same direct booking results as our clients. Perhaps this is why few multinationals have come to Menorca.
On the other hand, with multinationals you will never know what experience the team assigned to your project will have, whose development can take forever, or how many emails you will have to write to resolve some issues. With CloudHotelier you will work with a highly experienced team and you will have direct contact with the key people for the development of the project to be agile and tailored to your needs. What multinational can offer that?
Responsive since our beginnings
We developed the first responsive versions of our booking engines in 2010, a year before the appearance of Bootstrap. Our booking engine has an excellent user experience, also on mobile, which is why our clients have 33% of their bookings coming from mobile devices and tablets.
Logically, we are in favour of responsive technology. Some of our competitors work with adaptive techniques, which means offering different versions of the website and engine, mobile version and desktop version. This is a big mistake, and forces us to go through a debate that has been settled since the beginning of the mobile era, 10 years ago: responsive is the technique that offers the most advantages in all cases.
The only reason why these providers are offering a mobile version that is different from the desktop version is because their user experience (shopping carts) is poor. When we move this user experience to the small screen, the experience is even worse. Therefore, the reason is not the suitability of a mobile version, but its inability to obtain good results through responsive.
Another novelty is the use of AMP technology for the booking engine. I find this even more rocky. It is a technology with huge limitations, designed specifically by Google to cache digital media content (news, posts) so that it loads faster on mobile and uses less bandwidth. Contrary to what Booking is doing, with an increasingly powerful native app, these providers want to convince us to do the opposite, to use a technology with huge restrictions, with still many technical gaps (such as the double url bar) and an extremely basic user experience. Who would make a reservation on such a site?
Again, the only reason our clients achieve 33% mobile bookings is because we use responsive. A smooth user experience, native controls wherever possible, displaying information clearly and attractively. The technique used is not important per se, but the results obtained.
However, given the choice, the advantages of responsive are overwhelming, such as avoiding duplicate content, or the ability to share urls that will work well on any device, for example, sharing deep links to offers or specific availability searches.
Integrations
We are always open to new integrations. Especially those of the booking engine and payment platforms, which are extremely easy to realise, compared to other integrations, e.g. 2 way with channels and PMS.
We are especially happy with the integration with SiteMinder, as it is a key provider in all markets, in fact, we have already started to develop the SiteMinder Exchange integration for our new CRM. We also have integrations with Dingus Services and YielPlanet, which are widely used in the holiday industry. Like any other provider, we develop the integrations as the needs arise and we also carry out the integration free of charge in most cases.
We have also developed integrations with the main payment platforms (Redsys, Paypal, Stripe, Addon Payments, CECA, WorldNet), however, at the end of the day, the most used by customers has always been Redsys. Paypal because of its high commissions and the ease for the customer to reverse payments, with Stripe the problem has been the enormous amount of false negatives, in addition to its commission, also high compared to the 0.3% - 0.4% of the bank POS.
In this section, and thanks to the development of our PMS and the new version of our online booking platform, we are implementing a new service under the PCI-DSS standard that allows us to automate card verification, collections and refunds according to the booking policy. This automation is done via Addon Payments or Stripe, we expect to see Addon Payments grow from next year.
Goals: Are we late? Maybe.
A few years ago SiteMinder wanted to integrate with us but we didn't agree, later we were the ones who had to knock on their door, today they are a key partner. It could be that we have also fallen asleep with the goals, although we have our own opinion, the market is going its own way, and we have to adapt.
We have already applied for integration with GHA (Google Hotel Ads), Trivago and TriAdvisor. I am still sceptical about the real increase in bookings we can achieve. At the end of the day it's just another acquisition channel, not being there doesn't mean you won't get those bookings through other channels. In the same way that if you don't do AdWords your website will have more traffic coming from organic (AdWords eats organic), maybe acquiring that traffic is not as profitable as they want us to believe. But anyway, that's the way it is.
Artists copy, geniuses steal
The secret of our booking engine's success? From the beginning, we have been observing what the best players were doing and we have been evolving our tools to directly "copy" the best solutions that we have found along the way.
Thus, today, in our booking engine we shamelessly copy Booking.com's psychological aids and the design of our back-end is an exact copy of SiteMinder's Inventory.
Our philosophy is not to invent the wheel, and to take advantage of the A/B tests carried out by the big players. Everything you see on Booking.com has been tested and favours conversion. Why don't others copy Booking.com? I don't know!!!!
I am very surprised that at this stage of the film there are still booking engines that use the "shopping cart" model or do not know how to differentiate, at the level of psychological aids, positive reinforcement (green), sense of urgency (red), gain / opportunity (orange). Competitors, if you are reading this, talk it over with your programmers and UX experts. You're welcome.
We help our customers beyond commission
If your web provider works on commission only, how can they help you with something that doesn't earn them a commission? Our philosophy is to create a website that enhances the client's brand, that allows them to transmit their values and have their own personality. We have no problem working hand in hand with the client's digital communication agencies, making bespoke designs, or getting involved in digital marketing, beyond the hotel name conversions.
If your provider only charges commission, you can change it at any time, they will not be involved in helping you grow in the medium and long term.
We offer a personalised service, and we position ourselves as partners of our clients. For us, a client is much more than just a commission earner, we learn with them and help them in their online strategy. This shows in our projects and, paradoxically, it also shows in the results!
Our booking system has incredible features to increase the added value that our clients offer on their website, such as booking experiences. We also have a very powerful system of discounts, of all kinds, cumulative, non-cumulative, etc. This system makes the management of the engine extremely simple, but the results are extremely powerful.
We have always been a product company
CloudHotelier is a product developer company, not a financial company. We are not looking to deliver dividends, we are looking to grow the business and earn prestige. We are not at events or making phone calls, we are in the hotels talking to our customers, seeing what they need to improve their business.
When we started our career 10 years ago, we never thought we would be where we are now. We are satisfied with our role, we have been growing and learning with our customers, and we have always been on the cutting edge of innovation.
We are currently developing a very powerful integrated management tool. PMS + Channel Manager + CRM + Payment platform + Email marketing platform. A part of this tool is already in production with small clients, and we expect to have a full version by the end of 2018, coinciding with the launch of the V2 version of our engine.
We are getting excellent feedback for this new product, and thanks to the direct integration with channels (Booking.com) and Addon Payments it will allow us to achieve a level of automation never seen before in the industry. In addition, being a modular tool, and having integration with SiteMinder Exchange, we will be able to implement this tool in all types of clients, not only those who want to use our PMS.
We believe that, once again, like 10 years ago, we are way ahead of the big multinationals in technology and innovation, only this time, we are leaving Menorca. This doesn't seem to go down too well :)
