To Hold or Not To Hold A Leisure Reservation
April 14th, 2011I recently had a conversation about 24/48-hour reservation holds with Pat Conlon, a fellow Client Advocate here at NAVIS. It may be kind of pathetic but, yes, the NAVIS Client Advocates live, sleep and breath increasing leisure sales. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Pat and I spent a relaxing evening discussing the intriguing world of holds.
Here’s our thinking: If you’re going to allow your reservation team to offer 24 or 48-hour holds, why not just get the credit card, charge the reservation and offer a 24-hour cancelation policy instead? Make sense? Clichés about birds in bushes aside, why wouldn’t you want the money now? You’re still providing your guest with a fair deal, and fundamentally the same benefit. Only this way, it’s the guests’ responsibility to cancel, instead of your responsibility to play cat and mouse and secure the booking.
By the way, we have noticed conversion increases when a NAVIS client offers the cancelation policy instead of holding. We feel that if a prospect has committed to you by providing their credit card, they are less likely to keep shopping.
Recently, one reservation agent we observed switched from offering holds
to securing the credit card and offering a guarantee and
experienced a 10% increase in conversion.
We think it’s an idea worth considering. Let us know what you think or if this already works for you!
Brise Carpenter
Client Advocate
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This is very true! Plus most times it would give the guest the security to know that the room section of their reservation is taken care of, AND free up a line for a diferent guest because they are not calling back to make the reservation.
@ May 19th, 2011 at 20:57