September 2019 - May 2020
Background
After the acquisition of OYO Hotel and Casino Las Vegas went through in September, I transferred internally to the OTA Data Analytics team. The team was primarily responsible for collecting and analyzing data from Online Travel Agents (OTAs) like Booking.com and Expedia.
In November, the OTA Data Analytics team underwent a restructuring, leading to the creation of two separate teams: the OTA Data Collection team, responsible for gathering and storing raw data from OTAs, and the OTA Channel Management team, focused on generating insights from the stored data and taking actionable measures. Consequently, I made a transition to the OTA Channel Management team.
Responsibilities
As part of the OTA Data Analytics team, I mainly focused on analyzing and generating valuable insights to improve our North & South American hotels’ performance on the Booking.com platform. Additionally, I led a team of executives to implement the optimizations generated from the insights after transitioning to the OTA Channel Management team.
Here are a few examples of the different types of insights we discovered / optimizations we implemented:
- Marketing funnel - Dividing the user’s booking journey into 4 steps (Google → OTA platform → Product listing → Booking confirmation → Check-in) and improving conversion for each step.
- Google → OTA platform - Which hotels do not have a Google My Business listing; Which hotels do not have a complete Google My Business listing (with photos, contact information, website link, and reviews); Which OTA platform is not visible on the Google My Business listing; Whether all the OTA platforms are showing the same price for the hotel on specific dates.
- OTA platform → Product listing - Which hotel ranks poorly in their corresponding city’s search; Which of the hotels are not available for all bookable dates; Which hotel’s prices are not competitive; Which hero photo drives the highest click-through; Which room type is visible for double and triple occupancy.
- Booking, cancellation, and review windows - Understanding how users’ actions varied depending on the different pricing, promotions, and policy-related optimizations
- [Booking] Evaluating the duration between when a user books a hotel vs. when they check in across hotels with similar cancellation and payment policies and using this to predict future revenue.
- [Length of stay] Analyzing the average length of stay for hotels in a particular region, during specific periods in a year, and between domestic and international guests.
- [Cancellation] Understanding the time gap between check-in and cancellations, and examining its variations based on the selected cancellation and payment policy.
- [Policy] Evaluating the use of different rate plans with varying free cancellation windows and prepayment amounts in different regions.
- [Review] Studying when users add a review of their stay, and how this varies depending on the content and frequency of our reminder messages.
Similar optimizations were made for the other 2 steps as well.
- Others
- Content - Making the listings richer by adding FAQs, nearby points of interest and attractions, and updating property information and photos.
- Feedback - Understanding the positives and negatives from the review text and sharing the insights with the operations team that worked directly with the hotel owners.
In addition to my full-time role, I help small businesses build their first set of products, including landing pages, dashboards, internal applications, and marketing automations. Reach out if you are looking for an active collaborator on your next project!