21 Hoteliers interview Gorian Varbanov about the ongoing revolution for hotels in the online booking process

In February last year, Quendoo entered the Bulgarian market in a big way. Developed to help hotel and vacation property owners and managers, it provides a comprehensive cloud-based solution to maximise online presence and increase sales revenue. The platform integrates key digital tools to optimise occupancy and generate higher revenues, namely a Booking Engine, Channel Manager and Website Generator, using the latest software tools on the market.

Today we have invited one of the founders of the company, Gorian Varbanov, who will tell us about the results achieved by Quendoo a year later, the booking trends and all the novelties that lie ahead.

Hello, Gorian! Quendoo is increasingly establishing itself as the main platform for digitizing the booking process in hotels in Bulgaria. What are the main trends and how is the company developing?

The results are really good. Our products and ideas have been well received and we now have over 200 hotels using our technology. We are currently entering the busiest installation period for our products and have a very serious volume of new requests. We also work seriously on international markets. We have quite a few new clients in Greece as well, as well as conversations with clients from Romania and Great Britain.

We know you are actively adding new functionalities and products. What are the products that are best perceived by Bulgarian hoteliers and what will you surprise us with in the next quarter?

Undoubtedly, the most requested product is our booking engine. I think that this product is the most adapted booking engine possible for the pricing approach in Bulgarian hotels. We can safely say that there is no price list of a Bulgarian hotel that our booking engine cannot work with.

The desire of many hoteliers to work with a channel manager is growing. A major factor for this trend is the price levels we offer. Our prices for a channel manager with more than 20 channels start from 120 euros per year, which is an unprecedented offer for our market and therefore enables quite small hotels, where the need for this service is greatest, to take advantage of it.

Regarding the new products we are working on, I can pre-announce that we are planning to release a new tool that we have called rate checker. The official presentation of this product will be at the Holiday§Spa exhibition, in which Quendoo will take part. The exhibition will be held between February 15-17 at Expo Center Sofia. Rate Checker is actually a widget that appears when loading the hotel page and shows the hotel prices on the site for the given month, prices on booking.com and other online travel agencies, special offers. The idea is to demonstrate to site visitors that the most advantageous booking conditions are offered on the site. The tool is a hit among digital products at the moment and according to some hotels using similar functionalities, the increase in direct bookings through the site reaches up to 20%.

What advice can you give to hoteliers before the start of the summer season, what should they pay attention to in order to make more direct bookings?

The most important thing, of course, is to prepare the base and establish the right price policy for the new season. If hotels have not done their homework on these two indicators, digital tools are unlikely to have the expected effect. However, from the experience we have with various hotels using our platform, I would list several main factors that are decisive for achieving a high number of direct bookings.

• keep prices and availability up to date on your sites. If customers are not sure that when they make a reservation through the site they will really have a guaranteed room for the period they are booking for, they will prefer another booking channel such as booking.com or may even prefer another accommodation.
• Offer credit card payment through the site.-About 30% of customers would not book through a channel that does not offer online payment.
• Offer a familiar booking process through your site that is similar to already familiar channels, such as booking.com, etc. Customers are used to certain steps when booking and if your booking system is different, they can't navigate and prefer other channels to book again.

What are your expectations for the 2023 season?

We don't have a direct view of bookings from tour operators and I can't give a clear assessment there. However, from what we observe through our system, the direct bookings of the hotels we work with are at least 30% more than the same period in 2022. This makes me optimistic that the season will be strong.