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Enhancing your pricing strategy with deals

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Helping to solve both short- and long-term business needs, deals are a key component of a successful pricing strategy. Hielke van Trommel, Director of Product Marketing at Booking.com, shares how partners can incorporate them strategically

Pricing plays a crucial role in attracting traveller demand and securing bookings. This starts with ensuring you have a strong foundation of compelling rate plans. Building on this, there are proactive and reactive deals you can apply to add an extra layer of appeal to your listing. 

Deals can help you capture an even greater slice of market share. Having this competitive edge is especially important when you consider that over half (55%) of global travellers are more likely to search for promotions when planning their next trip.

Building your deals offering

Different deals serve different needs, and how you set up and build deals into your pricing strategy should be informed by your overarching business goals. Our deals have been designed with this in mind, providing you with the choice and flexibility to offer the right discounts at the right time based on your occupancy and revenue needs.  

That said, there are some guiding principles that can help you decide which deals to offer. Start by asking yourself: what problem am I trying to solve? Do you want to quickly fix a short-term occupancy issue, for example? In that case, you might consider a reactive deal. If you want to plan for consistent calendar moments in advance, a proactive approach is your best bet. Understanding any challenges you face will make it easier to select the deals that can help you overcome them. 

In general, deals are best suited to temporary needs. Digging into your property’s performance data – both historical and real time – can help pinpoint moments when you would most benefit from planning and activating different promotions. You can also filter the results of past deals you’ve participated in from the ‘Promotions’ tab in the extranet, which can help you measure past results and inform your future planning.  

It also helps to understand how deals stack – both with each other and other pricing solutions. If you have multiple deals running simultaneously, for example, not all of them will be visible to guests. And while you may be eligible for multiple opportunities at any given time, that doesn’t mean we’re encouraging you to pursue them all. Rather, we offer you a diverse range of deal types so that you can make an informed decision about what best matches your goals.

Portfolio Deals, Campaign Deals and Deep Deals 

Our deals fall under one of three categories: Campaign Deals, Deep Deals or Portfolio Deals. 

Campaign Deals are seasonal promotions that you can proactively plan for in advance. For example, if you want to lock in some long-term occupancy, our upcoming Early 2022 Deal can help you secure more bookings early in the season. Similarly, our Getaway Deal, which runs for a longer pre-defined time, can help plan your revenue in advance for the remainder of the year while securing up to 28% more bookings.

Then you have Deep Deals, which are reactive promotions that offer a high discount and run for a shorter period of time. Take one of the biggest shopping days of the year, Black Friday, as an example: when a large number of customers head online in search of offers. Our Black Friday Deal is designed to capture this spike in demand, with a dedicated badge and marketing campaign ensuring significant exposure for partners who decide to take advantage of the promotion. 

Prefer to build your own promotions? We also offer a variety of customisable Portfolio Deals. With other promotions, we ask for a certain commitment from you in order to market them effectively to consumers. Portfolio Deals, on the other hand, provide total flexibility – giving you full control of the discount amount, stay and book dates, as well as the audience. 

Portfolio deals, in particular, are an optimal way to adjust course as and when needed. If you notice an anomaly in your normal booking pattern, for example, reactively applying a Basic Deal can help increase your visibility and get more bookings. Or, if you want to take advantage of a last-minute spike in traveller demand, you can use a Last Minute Deal to attract customers and secure more revenue.

Driving additional marketing value

Often, deals are supported by marketing campaigns, where we use our marketing muscle to create high exposure moments that actively drive additional incremental demand. 

Using promotions to offer compelling prices ultimately influences the choices that travellers make on our platform. The key is knowing your business strategy and the goals you’re trying to achieve. From there, you can decide which deals make the most sense to your overall strategy.

 

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Discover more

Visit our Solutions page to find out more about the different promotions you can use to enhance your pricing strategy. 

Solutions

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Takeaway
  • Deals are an effective tool for partners looking to attract more demand and increase bookings
  • As a partner, you have access to a broad variety of deals that can be planned and activated in line with your overall pricing strategy as and when needed
  • While some deals require a set discount, others offer flexible features that can be customised to your business needs