How Lanta at Home Increased Direct Booking Share by 30% with Exely

About Lanta at Home

Lanta at Home is a 2-star hotel with 14 rooms located in Thailand. Since the hotel is just a 5-minute walk from Klong Dao Beach, guests can reach the seaside with ease.

Challenges

• Overdependence on OTA
• Faulty Channel Manager that causes overbooking
• Booking management by hand

Lanta at Home hotel relied only on Online Travel Agencies (OTA) bookings. For this reason, the hotel missed out on higher booking margins it would get by opting for direct sales. The hotel was unaware that it had the opportunity to increase its revenue.

The hotel has faced challenges with the previous Channel Manager, which has led to overbooking and an increased workload for the staff. The manual booking tracking has also been a burden, as there was no syncing between systems to streamline operations.

Solution

Direct Sales:

• Exely Hotel Website Builder. Exely provided Lanta at Home with the tools it needed to create the official hotel website. The hotel chose a color scheme, uploaded photos, and wrote text descriptions using the intuitive builder. Lanta at Home can update website content in the user-friendly account at any time without involving any designers or web developers. The website was optimized for SEO, ensuring that it would be ranked higher on search results.
• Exely Booking Engine. The solution is built in the websites created in Exely Hotel Website Builder. This allowed the hotel to receive direct bookings through the website, reducing their dependence on OTA. Exely Booking Engine effectively retains users on the website, encouraging them to book directly. With Exely commissions being lower than on OTA, the hotel manages to save on fees and increase booking margins.
• Exely Reputation Manager. Exely integrated the solution for Lanta at Home to monitor guest feedback effectively. The Reputation Manager collects guest reviews from the most popular online platforms and lets hotels display the overall rating and selected reviews on the hotel website without involving web developers. The reviews helped Lanta at Home retain users on the website as they do not have to look for reviews somewhere else.

Result

Online Distribution:

• Exely Channel Manager. Exely implemented the Channel Manager solution for Lanta at Home, enabling the hotel to effectively manage multiple channels while minimizing the risk of overbooking to 1%. By automating the distribution of prices and availability across various platforms, the hotel streamlined its sales management process and ensured that all bookings were synchronized in real time.

Property Management:

• Exely PMS. Exely provided Lanta at Home with a solution that automated and synchronized all bookings, getting rid of the need for manual tracking and reducing the risk of errors. By seamlessly integrating with the Booking Engine and Channel Manager, Exely PMS transformed the way Lanta at Home managed its booking records. This centralized system not only simplified the booking process but also freed up valuable time for staff by automating tasks such as tracking availability and reservations.