When guests dont experience positive emotion, they look for trust and reliability instead. What does this mean?

Travel purchases are a complex mix of emotional and logical triggers.

Emotional triggers include:

• Your hotels story
• Brand visual aesthetic
• Copywriting
• Imagery (Rooms, Interior, Amenities, Environment)
• Guest desires / dreams

Logical triggers include

• Your pricing
• Availability
• Appearance of security / safety / trust on your website

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When travellers are in the research phase, they are in a state of inspiration and heightened emotions.

They need to satisfy an emotional urge first (desire), before looking for signs of trust before booking (safety).

Potential guests that land on your website and feel no emotion or inspiration that interaction will likely leave your site.

In the search for another property that fulfills their urge and gut instinct about how they want to feel.

Here’s a quick formula for how to think about this:

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Ideal and Sustainable (High Margins):

High Desire + High Trust = Direct Booking

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Manageable, but unsustainable (Low Margins):

High Desire + Low Trust = OTA Booking

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Hoteliers Worst Nightmare:

Low Desire + Low Trust = Drop in bookings on both direct and OTA channels

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