Sceptre Hospitality Resources Unveils New, Innovative Booking Experience
Houston, TX (PRWEB) March 27, 2014 -- Sceptre Hospitality Resources today announced their new Internet Booking Engine (IBE) which will be released to the industry in April 2014. The new IBE includes responsive design, a shopping cart style booking process, persuasive messaging, and the brand new Call-to-Continue™ feature, among other exclusive functions.
“It's exciting to see the result of months of collaborative work between our design and development teams. We're listening to our clients as we re-define the booking experience. We want to provide hoteliers with better tools to engage the guest and merchandise their offerings. At the same time, we are addressing more complex conversion scenarios which involve multiple contexts and multiple devices," said Angelo Directo, VP of Design for SHR.
The design and development teams took a fresh approach to the new booking engine to capture conversion and prevent abandonment. The release marks the first real shopping cart experience for hotel booking engines and it includes multiple features to help hotels convert cross-context and mobile visits to the booking engine. These features include the Save for Later and Call to Continue™ options.
Save for Later
If guests are not ready to book, they can save their cart by simply entering an e-mail address. A link to their cart will then be sent to them to complete the booking process at a later time. Hotels can also use this feature to target these guests in future e-mail campaigns to re-engage their attention and increase bookings.
Call to Continue™
If a mobile guest has added items to their cart, but would prefer not to enter their information online to complete the booking, he has the option to call to continue by simply touching a number on the device. This feature sends the reservation information to the hotel’s call center with a unique Cart ID that allows the reservation agent to pick up where the guest left off and complete the booking.
To facilitate promotions and up-selling, the new booking engine offers a Discount Code field on the shopping cart and checkout screens. These screens also highlight any discounts the guest has already received during the booking process.
Add-ons are not new to SHR’s booking engines, but the new IBE allows items to be added in the cart view—even if the itinerary is multi-room and multi-property. Guests have the option of viewing their itinerary costs in an easy to read and understand Summary or Detail format.
The new IBE is fully optimized for single property independents, multi-property groups, and large hotel brands. SHR helps multi-property groups and large hotel brands cross-sell with features such as a comparison view, the ability for a guest to book multiple rooms and multiple stays across many properties in one transaction and suggestive selling prompts located in the cart view.
If your hotel or hotel chain is interested in learning more, please contact SHR at info(at)sceptrehospitality(dot)com.
About SHR
Sceptre Hospitality Resources is an innovative provider of reservations technology and services for the hospitality industry. The company serves nearly 3,000 properties on its reservation platform. SHR’s suite of products includes its proprietary WindsurferCRS, a state of the art central reservations system, MotionNotes, a video messaging platform, SpaLinx, a spa management and appointment booking application, Whiteboard Labs, a custom web design and development lab, and Revenue Management for Hire, a cost effective revenue management solution for properties of all sizes and brand affiliates.
Additional information about SHR and hospitality industry trends and tools may be found at the company’s website: sceptrehospitality.com.
Abbie Deaver, Sceptre Hospitality Resources, http://www.sceptrehospitality.com, +1 (303) 220-2168, [email protected]
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