Tips
The idea of one-cart booking makes intuitive sense. We all know from personal experience that if you go to the store for one thing, seeing other things in the store often prompts you to leave with more than you came for.
But what about in travel? And at scale? What does this behavior look like? To answer that question, we’re going to look at two key stats behind the Inntopia Commerce platform:
Let’s dig in.
Let me first clarify that I’m NOT talking about multiple products per cart. Simply adding two different rooms to a booking is something guests have been doing for years. What they haven’t been able to do is book two rooms AND three tickets in the same booking experience. That’s what we mean when we say multiple product types.
Right now, your guests come, choose their dates, choose their room, and buy. But how many of those guests would add some other product type – tickets, activities, rentals, etc. – to their cart if they were given the option? One out of every three.
Keep in mind this is an average for mostly out-of-the-box setups. Some of our more active users see numbers that are much higher than this.
Now it’s great if people add things to their carts, but how big of a different does that make to the dollar value of those itineraries?
Most people expect this chart to start high and then show small, incremental gains at each step. Instead, the dollar amount increases by almost the original amount in the cart! And when you think about what they might be adding:
You quickly realize that while a room does not necessarily scale with the size of the party, tickets and activities do. Four guests who all get a lesson will often spend more than the cost of their room. And so, as each product type is added, the dollar value of that cart grows significantly.
Keep in mind that these product types don’t have to be owned by the same company. Even if you only own the lodging, you could sell your partners’ tickets or activities (or vice versa) and capture some of that revenue.
However you slice it, single-transaction booking isn’t just simpler and less confusing for your guests, it can have a major impact on your bottom line.