Guest journey: 5 key stages to optimize your conversions

A traveller never books cold. Between the moment the urge to travel emerges and the click on “confirm my booking”, they go through a series of stages during which they browse, compare, hesitate, leave, and sometimes come back over several days and from several devices. Understanding this hotel guest journey is the condition for stepping in at the right moment, on the right channel, with the right message. The trap most accommodation providers fall into: concentrating all their efforts on the last stage (the booking) while neglecting everything that happens before. Yet it is often well upstream that the decision takes shape and that you can make the difference against your competitors. Another reality confirmed by the figures: this journey is never linear. The traveller does not follow a signposted funnel from inspiration to payment. They go back and forth, are influenced along the way, and can slip away from you at any stage if your presence is not consistent.

In this article, we break down the five key phases of the pre-booking journey, from the first inspiration to confirmation, and give you the concrete levers to optimize each of them.

From the first spark to the shortlist: inspiration, research and comparison

Even before visiting your website, your future guest has already evaluated you or ruled you out. This first phase of the hotel guest journey is often invisible to accommodation providers, yet this is where the shortlist you need to be on is put together. Missing these three stages means joining the race too late.

Inspiration: being present where the desire to travel is born

The traveller does not start their journey on Booking.com. They start on Instagram scrolling through their feed, on TikTok coming across a destination video, in a blog article or through a friend’s recommendation. The desire to travel always precedes active research, and it is at this stage that the smartest properties have already started working.

What this means in practice: your visibility cannot be limited to your OTA listing. An up-to-date Google Business Profile with recent, high-quality photos, destination-oriented content (not just “our hotel”, but “things to do around us”, “the best restaurants in the neighbourhood”, “the must-see spots in the region”); this is what makes your property exist in the traveller’s mind before they type anything into a search bar.

The most common mistake: only getting active once the season begins. Inspiration has to be worked on in advance, often two to three months before booking peaks. A traveller who mentally identified you in March will book in April.

→ Capitalize on combined accommodation + experience offers to win over your guests

Experiential content is the best inspiration lever. The desire is there. The traveller now takes action: they open Google. And that is where the competition gets serious.

Active research: appearing at the right time on the right channels

When a traveller types “boutique hotel Lyon city centre” or “unusual family accommodation Brittany”, three types of results appear: the Google local pack (with the map and Google Business listings), the OTAs that dominate the top organic positions, and more rarely, well-ranked property websites. The reality is that you are playing on all three fields at the same time, whether you like it or not.

On SEO, the challenge is not to beat Booking.com on its own queries; that is a lost cause. The challenge is to be visible on long-tail and destination queries where independents still have their place: “best sea view hotel Normandy”, “B&B with pool Luberon”, “romantic weekend accommodation Alsace”. These queries convert better because they reveal a precise intent.

On Google Business Profile, three elements make the difference between appearing and disappearing: the freshness of your photos (Google favours properties that update regularly), the volume and recency of reviews, and the completeness of the listing (hours, services, description, questions/answers). It is free, under-used by most independents, and directly linked to your click-through rate. OTAs, for their part, play a useful role at this stage; there is no point fighting them. Let them generate visibility, and in parallel build your strategy to win back the booking direct.

The traveller has found several options. They are not booking yet, they are comparing. And this phase is often where everything is decided.

Comparison: how travellers weigh their options before deciding

At this stage, your future guest has three to five properties in mind. They will scrutinize them according to precise criteria, and not always the ones you imagine. Price matters, of course. But the average rating and its number of reviews, the cancellation policy, what is included (breakfast, parking, Wi-Fi), and the consistency of photos across platforms weigh just as much in the decision.

The so-called “billboard effect” is central here: the traveller discovers your property on Booking.com, then looks for your official website to see if they can get a better deal direct. According to several industry studies, between 25% and 40% of guests who book direct went through an OTA before landing on your site. This is an opportunity, not a threat, provided your website lives up to what they are looking for.

What you need to make visible and immediately clear at this stage: a benefit to booking direct (best price guaranteed, flexible cancellation, complimentary breakfast), a guest rating displayed on your own website, and complete consistency between your visuals on OTAs and those on your site. One photo that does not match reality or an unexplained price gap, and the traveller leaves.

→ How to increase your direct bookings and limit the impact of OTA commissions

The traveller has their shortlist. They probably have your name in mind. They will now visit your official website, and that is where everything is really decided.

The home stretch of the guest journey: validation and the act of booking

The traveller has their shortlist. They probably have your name in mind. What happens now is decisive: they will visit your website, look for a reason to choose you over another property, and if something disappoints them, they will leave in thirty seconds without a trace. This phase of the hotel guest journey concentrates both the highest conversion potential and the greatest risk of loss.

Visiting the official website: your only chance to convince without an intermediary

When a traveller lands on your website after seeing your listing on Booking.com, they are not looking to be convinced a second time that you exist. They are looking for three things: confirmation that the property matches what they saw, information they did not find on the OTA, and whether it is worth booking direct.

You have about five seconds to meet these three expectations before they leave. What matters at that moment: loading speed (Google considers that beyond 3 seconds, you lose a significant share of your visitors), the quality of the photos in first position, and the clarity of the main message. A cluttered home page, a slider that takes time to scroll, a “book” CTA buried in the navigation, and that is a lost conversion.

What must be visible without scrolling:

• the type of accommodation and its location;
• your strengths in two or three words;
• your guest rating;
• a prominent direct booking button.

On mobile, where more than 60% of your visitors arrive, every element must be reachable with one thumb, without zooming or frustration.

→ How to digitalize the guest journey?

A beautiful website catches the eye. What converts are the elements that answer the traveller’s silent doubts before they even voice them.

Reassurance levers: answering doubts before they become objections

At this stage, the traveller has four questions in mind, even if they do not ask them explicitly. Is it really like in the photos? Can I cancel if my plans change? Is payment secure? And do I pay less by booking through your website?

Each of these doubts has a concrete answer to build into your website. Guest reviews displayed directly on your pages (not just an overall rating, but recent, signed excerpts) answer the first question. A cancellation policy worded in plain language (not in small print referring to general terms and conditions) answers the second. Payment security badges visible on the booking page answer the third. And an explicit statement such as “best price guaranteed when you book here” answers the fourth.

This last point deserves particular attention. Displaying a ”best price” guarantee is not enough if the traveller does not believe you. What makes it credible: a real-time comparison widget showing your direct rate against the OTA rate, or simply a tangible benefit not available on the platforms (free cancellation up to the day before, breakfast included, early check-in on request).

An often-overlooked detail: if you welcome international guests, the language of reviews matters. A British traveller is more reassured by reviews in English than by an anonymous 9.2 rating. Multilingual management of your online reputation has a direct impact on conversion depending on source markets. The traveller is convinced, they click “book”. Now comes the last and often the most fragile stage of the guest journey.

The act of booking: simplifying so you do not lose the guest at the last stage of the journey

According to the Baymard Institute, nearly 70% of e-commerce shopping carts are abandoned, and the payment stage accounts for a disproportionate share of these abandonments. In the hotel industry, the stakes are even higher: amounts are high, the rules of the game are specific (guarantees, prepayments, cancellation conditions), and the slightest doubt at this stage tips the balance.

The costliest friction points at this point in the hotel guest journey are often the simplest to fix: a booking funnel with too many steps, mandatory account creation before being able to pay, a total price that only appears on the last line with taxes added as a surprise, or overly limited payment options. Each of these points represents a guest lost a few seconds away from conversion.

A high-performance booking engine must eliminate these friction points by default. The Reservit booking engine is designed with this goal in mind: a journey of three steps maximum, a mobile-responsive interface, transparent display of the total price from the start, payment options that meet current standards (credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay), and instant synchronization with the PMS to avoid any availability mismatch. The result: fewer abandonments, more confirmed bookings, with no extra effort on your part.

→ How to increase your direct bookings and limit the impact of OTA commissions

Mastering these five stages is good. But your guests never follow them in that order, and that is precisely where your biggest conversion losses are hiding.

A non-linear guest journey: adapting your strategy to how people actually behave

This is the angle most accommodation providers miss. We talk about the “booking funnel” as if the traveller moved in a straight line from inspiration to payment. The reality is quite different: they browse on mobile on the subway, pick up again on a computer three days later, receive an email from an OTA in the meantime, talk about it with their partner, come back to your website, and hesitate again. Understanding this non-linear hotel guest journey is what separates a strategy that endures behaviours from a strategy that anticipates them.

Why the guest journey never follows a perfect funnel

According to Think with Google, 40% of travellers start their search on mobile and complete their booking on desktop, sometimes several days later. Between these two moments, they will have visited an average of 17 different websites before booking. This figure says it all: your property is in constant competition, every time a session resumes, not just at first contact.

This behaviour has two direct implications. The first: your presence must be consistent across all touchpoints; what the traveller sees on Booking.com, on Google, on Instagram and on your website must tell the same story, with the same photos, the same rates and the same positioning. An inconsistency between channels creates immediate friction in trust. The second: a visitor who leaves without booking is not a lost prospect, but a prospect to follow up with. Remarketing (ad retargeting of visitors to your booking engine) is one of the most profitable levers precisely because it targets an already qualified audience.

→ 2025 review and 2026 trends in the hotel and restaurant industry

While the journey is chaotic on the traveller’s side, it also reveals something valuable on the property’s side: the precise places where you systematically lose them.

The costliest friction points and how to eliminate them

Identifying where you lose your prospects is easier than it seems. Google Analytics 4, combined with tracking from your booking engine, lets you map precisely at which stage visitors drop off. A high bounce rate on the home page points to a speed or clarity problem. Massive abandonment at the room selection stage suggests a problem with how offers are presented or how readable rates are. Abandonment on the payment page reveals technical friction or a lack of reassurance.

Three friction points come up almost universally. A website that is too slow: Google estimates that one extra second of loading time can reduce conversions by 7%. A booking engine that is poorly integrated or redirects to an external page, which breaks the experience and causes trust to plummet. And the absence of a visible benefit to booking direct: if your price is identical to Booking.com’s and there is no additional benefit, the traveller will choose the platform they already know.

The most useful audit you can do: go through your own booking funnel in private browsing mode, on a phone, all the way to confirmation. What you discover reflects exactly what your guest experiences, and it is often revealing.

→ How to increase your occupancy rate in the low season?

Identifying friction points is the diagnosis. Measuring the impact of your fixes is what turns an observation into a lasting strategy.

Measure and optimize: the key indicators for managing your conversions

Optimizing a journey without data means moving forward blindly. Four indicators are enough to manage the essentials: the booking engine conversion rate (visits vs. completed bookings), the payment funnel abandonment rate, the share of direct bookings in your total revenue, and the acquisition cost per channel (what each OTA booking vs. direct booking really costs you, commissions included).

These metrics are useless if they do not lead to concrete actions.

• a high abandonment rate at the payment stage: test a simplified form or add a payment option;
• a share of direct bookings that is stagnating: strengthen the best price guarantee or launch a remarketing campaign;
• a drop in organic traffic: audit your site speed and the freshness of your content.

Optimizing the guest journey is not a one-off project. It is a continuous loop: measure, identify, fix, measure again. The properties that improve their conversions fastest are those that have built this logic into their monthly routine, not those that redesign their website every three years.

The pre-booking guest journey is not a funnel that you only need to unblock once and for all. It is a living system, influenced by travellers’ changing behaviours, evolving algorithms and competitive pressure from OTAs. What worked two years ago deserves to be reassessed today. What this article should leave you with is a simple conviction: every stage counts, and every friction point left untreated is a lost booking, often to the benefit of a competitor who has done the work. The goal is not to optimize everything at once, but to start by identifying where you lose the most prospects, and to act there first.

Your website gets visits but does not convert as much as you would like? The booking engine is often the first friction point to fix and the quickest to optimize. Our Reservit experts analyze your booking journey and show you concretely how to reduce your drop-offs and increase your direct bookings.

Julie
Communication Manager
In partnership with Jennifer Therond