There is a certain pride you can feel when you walk into an independent hotel that has been built with care. The kind where every corner has a story, every detail has been chosen and every guest is made to feel part of something personal. That was exactly the feeling I had when I first visited the hotel tucked away just beyond the countryside. It was the kind of place where you could tell the team loved what they did and it showed in the warmth of the welcome, the ease of the service, the small thoughtful touches that no chain could ever replicate.
On the surface, things were going well. The rooms were full most weekends. Guests left glowing reviews. The website told the right story. Yet as we sat down and looked more closely, a quiet frustration emerged. The numbers were not matching the experience. Direct bookings were falling. More and more guests were choosing to book through third-party websites instead. While the traffic to their own site remained healthy, the bookings themselves were not keeping pace.
It is something I have come to recognise almost instinctively. The moment a guest decides to book is delicate. It is built on trust, emotion and convenience. If that trust is interrupted, even for a second, it can quietly slip away.
When we followed the booking journey together, it became clear where things were coming undone. The website carried the hotel’s spirit beautifully. But when the guest clicked through to book, the connection weakened. The booking process felt slower, heavier and less intuitive, especially on mobile, where more than half of today’s guests choose to book. In fact, 40% of direct bookings come through mobile devices, reflecting a clear and growing traveller preference for mobile-first experiences. When that journey feels clunky or outdated, it’s easy to lose a potential guest in seconds.
It’s a small but costly gap and one I see more often than I would like. Hotels that care deeply about their real-world experience sometimes miss that the online journey deserves the same level of attention and guests do not separate the two. To them, booking a stay and living it are part of the same story. One should lead naturally into the other, with nothing getting in the way.
That is why we created REZbooker Booking Engine built on Sabre SynXis technology. Not to disrupt, or to shout for attention, but to quietly fit into a hotel’s rhythm. To let guests move from curiosity to commitment without hesitation. A booking engine should never feel like a separate system; it should feel like an extension of the hospitality the hotel has already promised.
I have seen what happens when that connection is restored. Bookings rise, not because guests have been pushed or persuaded, but because the path simply feels right again. As I often remind the hoteliers I work with, “Your booking experience should feel like the first welcome, not the first hurdle.”
I am Jagjot Hayre, Sales and Partnerships Manager at HotelREZ. If you care about how your guests feel when they walk through your door, it is worth asking, how do they feel when they try to book?
Which hotel booking engine are you trusting to tell that part of your story? Contact me and BOOK A DEMO, let’s talk.
