How Things Have Changed in Hotel Booking

It is doubtless that the online (Internet) domain has considerably changed the practices of hotel booking. Still, consumers-tourists may not be fully aware of how dramatically obtaining lodging in hotel rooms has changed over the past thirty years (i.e., compared with the 1990s and earlier). Moreover, the transformation is mostly felt when it comes to obtaining rooms in a very short notice, from three days in advance to same day reservation; it is now much harder to succeed than it used to be for travellers with years long experience. The hotels are much less flexible, and the tourists have to develop skills in maneuvering between different channels.

The reasonable, and generally desirable, period for hotel reservation is between one to three months in advance of the expected time of arrival (check-in). Many tourists apply even a longer time of six months in advance to secure rooms, but then the frequency of cancellations gets higher, including at the last minute or with no prior announcement. This behaviour is likely to create troubles for hotels as well as for other travellers by blocking the possibility of reservations when they are mostly needed. Hotels, particularly the hotel chains, use different techniques to deal with the situation by offering graded types of booking: a reduced rate with no refund in case of cancellation (sometimes called ‘early bird’ reservations) and a higher rate with premium that allows for free cancellation (e.g., up to 24 hours before expected check-in), where in-between there are offers with options for partial refund (i.e., according to period of prior cancellation). Travellers have to make their risk assessment to decide which rate to choose.

Businesses travellers are probably savvier in handling situations that require them to book hotels within a few weeks or even days (such situations are likely to happen frequently for higher ranking managers or executives). Academics and professionals in different fields who plan to attend conferences have to prepare in advance if they wish to secure rooms in locations nearby the conference venue (e.g., especially when the conference takes place in a major hotel). The more fortunate ones among the groups stated above get the assistance of their skilled administrative staff to make the reservations for them. However, for leisure or recreational tourists during vacations who find themselves in need of short notice lodging solutions, these situations can be quite challenging; a similar situation faces those who need to travel for other private reasons (e.g., medical treatments, family matters).

As guiding reference for further elaboration, let us consider four main options for making hotel reservations:

• Directly interacting with the reception team of a hotel (phone, e-mail, in-person on-site);
• Interacting with a call centre for hotel booking at hotels within the same chain;
• Booking at the online reservation system of the hotel (or its chain) by its self-service interface;
• Booking through online platforms external to the hotels (e.g., Booking.com, Hotels.com, Expedia.com, plus airline platforms that allow to make coupled flight + hotel booking).
• Note: The following concerns individuals travelling alone or with their families and not to group tours or any arrangements by travel agencies.

Any traveller should take notice that he or she may need to consult and navigate between some of these options to retrieve and identify the better accommodation as available to them. That is particularly true when a room accommodation is required within days. For instance, one may find that accommodation can be available for the desired dates through one channel but not the other, or there are salient differences in rates (i.e., cost) of accommodation at different types or comfort levels of rooms. The online booking system and its interface have to be user-friendly on a desktop computer and perhaps even more so on a mobile smartphone or tablet during travel.

It seems that hotel staff these days are less favourable to people coming in ‘from the street’ in request for short notice lodging (e.g., same or following day and for the following few days) — even if the traveller looks rather dignified. That was quite different just a few decades ago when hotels appeared more welcoming to unplanned guests, and to an opportunity to fill-in rooms left vacant. Two qualifications are needed, however: First, there may still be a significant difference between large cities and smaller ones, towns or countryside villages (e.g., vacation sites); Second, nevertheless, it may depend greatly on the season, whereby also in popular vacation sites and during busy seasons it could be very difficult to locate a vacant room in short notice. The problem in recent years is that the busy season has become year-round, especially in major cities (e.g., Europe, North America).

In earlier decades, one could make a short tour of a city or vacation site and find accommodation (even two rooms for the family) at a hotel (i.e., in person on location) on the same day or day after, and for the next several days. Succeeding at this venture is getting much less likely in recent years. Ironically, there is yet a better chance to find a vacant room available for just a single night on the same day of entering the hotel than for the next night or for 3-4 nights. That might solve the problem conveniently and safely for that single night, but if one has a horizon of several days (e.g., a week or more), the scenario of moving between hotels everyday may be much less satisfying. If the total period is long enough and one has a good projection of its length, one may find a better solution at apartment hotels or by travelling to smaller cities or towns and farther into the countryside (likely also at lower cost). In short, the lucky traveller should find a room for the night this way, and even luckier to find a room for 2-4 nights.

Reservations could be done more easily and friendly in the past with the reception team of a hotel by phone or e-mail, and the combination of both. This option is still very much possible and valid, yet it is also getting less effective and less popular as online channels become more dominant. Apparently, one may find a valid and good offer through an online platform of the hotel itself while a human representative says the hotel is fully booked for the requested dates. Oftentimes, a user-friendly and informative online reservation interface can make it more practical, effective and easier to book a room than by enquiring with a hotel staff — yet we should clarify here that it applies more to large hotels and hotel chains and it is truly an individualistic matter, that is, it depends on the representative the traveller is talking to and the amicable rapport between them — there can be much variation in this respect.

A plausible reason that hotel staff in the more distant past were better capable to find vacant rooms for accommodation even in short notice is that they had better access to and control of the full schedules of room occupancy in the hotel. There appears to be a sort of fencing between clusters of rooms at a hotel, allocated among channels for booking. Thus, a senior receptionist may know of rooms ordered through the online booking system of the hotel once the reservation was placed but unaware of it or not have access to such a room beforehand. In other words, the hotel representative may find and declare that the hotel is fully booked while it is not really so; by referring to the online system interface one may find a comfortable available room for the dates required (based on actual experience).

• Note that the event may also work in reverse: A motivated representative of a hotel reception team may find a prospect customer-guest an available room for requested dates when the online system claims that no rooms are available. Unfortunately, that was more likely to occur some ten or more years ago than these days, but it can still happen — it depends on the will and skills of the representative or manager at the hotel.
• A more troubling experience occurs when the receptionist tells the incoming prospect guest almost instantly that the hotel is fully booked; it leaves the unfortunate traveller wonder how efficient and highly observant the receptionist is to notice so quickly on the screen through the system that there are no rooms available for the same or following nights. The answer may be very much true yet uncomfortable because the receptionist did not seem to make any effort to find a solution.
• There seems to develop over-reliance of hotel employees on the readily available information provided by the computer system without attempting their personal human resources to solve problems. Again, behaving differently seems to be a question of good will and skills.

External online booking platforms pose additional challenges to both hotels and tourists or travellers more broadly. If the Intranet and Internet reservation databases of the hotel are to some extent separated and are not fully and continuously aligned, the relations to external booking platforms are likely to be even more troublesome. Some hotels, in chains and stand-alone, encourage tourists to make reservations directly with them by phone, e-mail or their own online booking system, and may offer some benefits to such “in-house” customers-guests. That seems to be the best way to book hotel rooms.

However, hotels seem nonetheless to be more cautious, thereby even when they ask for credit card information as guarantee (e.g., during online booking and again at check-in), they sometimes do not suffice with that and require a cash down-payment in advance or a tentative pre-charge of the credit card (i.e., provide “authorisation”). This may arise from sour relations of hotels with external platforms (i.e., customers that arrive with their vouchers) or customers booking directly with them but with problematic cancellation habits. The regrettable outcome is that hotel staff appear suspicious of customers-guests when this is unwarranted — particularly if the guest booked the room directly with the hotel. This practice suggests a problem of erosion of trust by hotels in customers-guests, that may be applied to protect hotels from malbehaviour of some unreliable prospect customers but can be damaging overall.

It is not intended to create an illusion here that it was always simple and easy to book hotel rooms until twenty years ago. A search effort was always required (remotely in advance or on location), yet the effort had a better chance to be fruitful, and for the interaction to be more friendly and warmer. On the other hand, making hotel reservations through a hotel’s well-designed self-service online booking system and interface can have several advantages: convenient to search and follow the process, see photo images of the rooms, and read detailed information unpressed. Having informative and reliable websites, while being welcoming and visually appealing, is essential for hotels nowadays. Travellers, tourists among them, have to learn how to negotiate between booking channels and methods in more and less comfortable situations — may they find a most suitable accommodation solution when they need it.