visitLancashire.com - your online booking comparison site
Tuesday, 16th February 2010
visitlancashire.com now features ‘polling’. This means that it acts as a Lancashire accommodation comparison site and features prices from many of the top booking sites that everyone knows e.g. LateRooms, Activehotels and Superbreak.
It allows an online visitor to search for products with availability fed through from multiple sources, many of which are commercial booking websites. It helps the user complete their booking with their chosen option.
For you – this means that all your availability with the Visit England partners will show in one place and the consumer sees a site which is comprehensive and gives them confidence when booking so they do not leave our site to go off to many other websites in search of better deals.
How does it work?
The availability is provided by a number of sales agents through our web services (see list). The service also works alongside the availability from the LOIS DMS and Eviivo Frontdesk, both of which are fully integrated into the booking process on visitLancashire.com. If a hotel is using LOIS DMS but is also using another sales agent, both will appear and the consumer selects their chosen option.
visitlancashire.com will continue to facilitate full bookings through the LOIS DMS and Eviivo Frontdesk, but properties available through ‘polling’ will be booked on the sales agent’s own website – i.e. the customer will be taken to the third party site to complete the financial transaction.
We now ‘poll’ availability from:
• LOIS (DMS)
• Eviivo FrontDesk
• LateRooms
• Active Hotels
• Bed Searcher
• Cottages 4 You
• Hotelopia
• Premier Inn
• Superbreak
• Hilton
The introduction of polling has meant that nearly 40% of your accommodation businesses are now bookable online (273 out of 715) via visitlancashire.com. So, it is now more important than ever to keep your availability up-to-date and to ensure that you have completed thisas far in advance as possible.
Don’t forget – if you do not include a price in your availability (even standard rack rate) then you will not show on a search and the consumer will assume that you are full!
Remember – with online booking some businesses worry about paying commission. But you only pay commission on actual bookings. So your room would otherwise remain empty. So 90% income is better than 0%.
We are now looking to help the remaining 60% of accommodation providers that currently do not feature on visitlancashire.com online booking searches. If you want a piece of the action please don’t delay and contact Sarah Lundy on 01257 226619 to discuss your options.
Take a look at visitLancashire.com and see polling in action.
