Don’t Cancel, Postpone: New Functionality

A week ago, we made a free tool, at your disposal, that allows you to monitor the average price trends per night, filterable by location, occupancy, and category. Yesterday, we announced that you could use Ring2Travel agents, our Customer Experience Center, at no cost, to properly attend to the surge of calls you are receiving during this time.

Today, we want to present a new functionality, developed as a matter of urgency and designed to discourage customers from cancelling and convince them to postpone their trip, in exchange for an incentive in the form of an optional discount and, to a degree, an act of awareness and solidarity during this current delicate situation.

DON’T CANCEL YOUR TRIP, POSTPONE IT: HOW IT WORKS

This functionality, which we have baptised as Reservation Displacement, actually works in a very simple way.

1. The user intends to cancel: When a user accesses the My Bookings section of the hotel’s website, enter their e-mail and the booking reference, and click the Cancel Booking button, a popup will be displayed. The said popup will consist of a photo and texts that are 100% modifiable, inviting the user to postpone the trip instead of cancelling the reservation. The buttons will allow them to either select alternative dates or proceed with the cancellation. Since the price per night for the new dates is likely to be more expensive, the user may be offered a discount to reward their decision. This way, you are not overly harmed by their decision to defer. In any case, the discount is optional. If the user clicks Cancel, the popup will close and they can proceed as usual.
2. The user opts to postpone the trip: When the user clicks Postpone, the flexible calendar will be shown. They can check availability and price per night for alternative dates and they can even change the display mode to calendar charts or consult the cheapest months. From thereon, the reservation process will follow its normal course.
3. Discount via Promo code: It should be noted that the optional discount will be applied through a Promo code (done internally), so the discount could be varied depending on a certain date range.
4. Booking Modification: All displaced reservations will be received, both by the hotel and by the customer, as a conventional Booking Modification.
5. Business Intelligence: Through Business Intelligence, it will be possible to track the effectiveness of the functionality since all reservations will be easily identified through the Promo code applied.