After staying indoors for about 2 and a half years, people are starting to travel again. The travel industry is seeing a rapid boost this year. And now is a good time to invest in a hotel marketplace.
20000 people participated in a survey conducted by Arateg where 40% of the participants said that they will rebook the trips they cancelled due to Covid-19.
By getting into the travel & tourism industry, you can also be a part of the growing profit. With WooCommerce, building your eCommerce website is easier and more profitable than ever. Moreover, you can extend the facilities by letting other vendors sell their products on your site as well.
Today, we'll walk you through the steps to launch your very own hotel booking website and describe essential actions to monetize the site. At the end of the blog, you'll get a detailed case study for a more clear overview.
Let's get started by knowing the fact-
Business Opportunities of Hotel Booking Marketplace
The hotel booking marketplace works as a middleman between hotels and customers. They collect information about various hotels and provide customers with lots of options and compare for better deals. The revenue model for this type of online hotel reservation platform lies in charging a service fee for the payment transactions conducted on a marketplace.
The travel sector recovered over 50% of its gross revenue by the end of 2021 compared to the pre-coronavirus numbers. Based on Travelport's report this recovery is projected to reach 85% by the end of 2022.
The online booking system is also getting popular nowadays. 88% of adults in the USA prefer to book hotels online.
Another important report projects that online hotel bookings would exceed $174 million across the globe in 2022. Whereas, 700 million people will make hotel room booking online by 2023.
These stats are enough to boost your interest in investing money in this profitable sector.
Why Hotel Owners Would Join Your Marketplace
There are some significant benefits to joining a hotel booking marketplace. Such as-
- Digitalization: Although most hotels have their own website, small hotels don't have that luxury. By listing on a hotel booking marketplace, they can transfer their business online.
- Big Customer Pool: Unlike standalone hotels, hotel marketplaces have a bigger customer pool. So hotels get more exposure and customers also get more options to choose the best deal for them.
- Extra Promotion: Promotion in such systems is much easier and cheaper for hotel and property owners than through Google search. A hotel gets extra visibility by the means of a hotel booking marketplace and doesn’t spend money on promoting its website with SEO.
- Additional Selling Channel: Other than their website, hotels have an additional selling channel. Also, listing on a hotel marketplace can get extra traffic to their website which can ultimately result in sales.
Now we know that the business opportunities of the hotel booking marketplace, let's see how to create a hotel booking marketplace using WordPress.
5 Essential Features You Should Include in Your Hotel Marketplace Website
You have got the basic structure of your hotel booking marketplace by following the above steps. Now it is time to add the features you are required in order to make your marketplace stand.
Hotel marketplaces are different than other marketplaces. The customers are different and they require a seamless booking experience. They need to see the hotel rooms, locations, and reviews and directly communicate with the hotels.
That is why you need to have certain features on your marketplace like-
- Versatile Homepage, User Login, and Verification
- Live Search Button
- Online Payment System
- Hotel Review System
- Live Chat Feature
Versatile Homepage, User Login, Verification & Profile
The homepage is the first page that the users interact with. It will provide an introduction to the customers. That is why you need to make your homepage versatile.
On a hotel booking website, it is very necessary to verify the hotel that is registered to your website. That way you can ensure that legitimate hotels are signing up to your website. You can use the Dokan vendor verification module in order to complete this process.
Live Search System
On a hotel booking marketplace, users need to search for hotels using different parameters like hotel location, ratings, most popular, featured, etc. Dokan adds these parameters by default. However, using the Dokan Geolocation module, you can display a google Maps (Mapbox) on the hotel listing page.
Online Payment System
Your hotel booking marketplace needs various payment systems like PayPal, Stripe, Wirecard, etc. These payment systems are globally recognized and customers from all over the world can use these payment methods. Dokan supports these payment methods and additionally, Dokan also supports any payment methods that support WooCommerce.
Hotel Review System
Dokan has a review system that helps customers write a descriptive review for every hotel. All you have to do is enable the Dokan vendor review module.
Live Chat Button
In order to decide about reserving a hotel room, customers may want to talk to hotel owners or the representative directly. Dokan has integration with Facebook, Whatsapp, TalkJS, and Tawk.to. You can use these integrations to implement a live chat feature on your hotel marketplace.
These are the important features you must have on your hotel booking website.
How to Create a Hotel Booking Marketplace with WordPress
WordPress has made it easy to create any kind of website with ease. And yes you can create an eCommerce store using the famous WooCommerce plugin and turn it into a multi-vendor marketplace using Dokan.
Dokan is a fast and feature-rich multi-vendor marketplace plugin for WordPress. It helps you establish a unified platform so multiple vendors can create their mini stores and you can earn money from each sale.
Learn all about Dokan's top features and modules.
Prerequisites For Launching Hotel Marketplace
You need the following attributes to start a hotel booking marketplace on your WordPress site.
- WooCommerce (Free)
- Dokan Light (Free)
- Dokan Pro (For Advanced Functionalities)
- WooCommerce Bookings plugin (Pro)
- Dokan bookings module (Pro)
- Otel Theme for Hotel Booking & Reservation (Pro)
Here are the steps you need to follow-
- Install Dokan to Configure Your Marketplace
- Configure General Setting of Dokan
- Install Otel Theme for Hotel Booking & Reservation
- Allow Hotel Owners to Register on Your Marketplace
- Upload Bookable Products (Rooms)
Step 1: Install Dokan to Configure Your Marketplace
WooCommerce provides you with all the functionalities to establish an eCommerce platform to sell online. But if you're extending your vision and planning to build a multivendor marketplace, Dokan is the easiest way.
First of all, you have to install and activate the Dokan plugin on your WordPress site. This marketplace solution comes with all the functionalities of a marketplace.
Installing Dokan is similar to any other WordPress plugin. You need to install the lite version first which is FREE. Here, you will get all the basic features of the marketplace. In order to uncover all the advanced features and frontend capabilities, you can download and activate the Dokan Pro Version.
Note: You don't need to install WooCommerce individually. It will be installed automatically when you are installing Dokan.
You can check our step-by-step guide to building a free eCommerce marketplace using WordPress.
Or go through the video tutorial below–
FAQ Regarding Hotel Marketplace
Marketplace booking enables customers to search for, find and book a service appointment
Hotels use different techniques to attract customers. Like,
1. Offer corporate rates with recreational facilities
2. Promote on social media
3. Send emails
4. Provides easy transportation
5. Provides speedy check-in and check-out
6. Offers healthy menu options.
Six essential hotel sales strategies are group bookings, direct bookings, destination marketing, cross-promotional sales, guest rewards strategies, and revenue management strategies.
Create Your Hotel Booking Marketplace & Start Earning
We are finally at the end and hopefully, now you have got all the information to create a hotel marketplace. To sum it up for you,
- Use WooCommerce and Dokan to create your marketplace
- Add the necessary features to your marketplace
- Follow the steps to monetize your marketplace the right way
- Read up on success stories in order to know the competitors and their strategies.
Earning from a marketplace is not easy as creating one. You can follow step by step and create the marketplace. But in order to earn from it, you need to apply the right business models and know your audience. That is the only way you will make your site profitable.