Overview
Welcome to Discovery, a product designed to help hoteliers such as Margaritaville Hotels & Resorts reveal interested travelers and generate more direct hotel bookings (and revenue) via their own websites.
TL;DR
Flip.to’s human-centered Discovery product helps Margaritaville Hotels & Resorts organically capture 2,048,000 interested leads which has lead to more hotel bookings through their website.
Since its March 2021 launch, it has generate a total of $44.3 million direct booking revenue directly attributed to Discovery* 💰💰💰
*Current stats as of March 2023
99 problems
On top of rebounding from the pandemic, the hotel industry as a whole have to deal with plenty of issues. Here are pain points that frequently come up:
Online travel agencies (OTAs)
90% of travelers conduct research online and a majority will conduct searches through OTAs owned by the 2 biggest players in the market, Expedia Group and Booking.com. Hotels list on OTAs to reach the largest possible audience but pay for it through a staggering 15-30% commission fee of the total booking price. With predatory commission fees hoteliers are left with barely a profit margin from rooms sold through an OTA.
Competitor websites
There’s also endless competition from hundreds of competitor websites once people start googling. Most site visitors consider multiple brands and visit hundreds of websites during their vacation planning process.
Horrible conversion rates
If by some miracle an interested traveler visits your website, because most visitors aren’t ready to book, typical hotel websites only convert 2% of total site traffic.
98% of site visitors drop off without the hotelier learning of their intent or who they are.
The whole process feels very transactional from start → finish.
An unconventional approach
The folks at Flip.to bucked general trends and went with an ‘Apple’ product first mindset: build it and eventually users will follow.
