The price-list is an informative document that provides guests with information pertaining to costs of accommodation during a certain time period.

This piece of information is more important than any other one because, regardless of quality, amenities or other services that certain accommodation has to offer, when choosing a destination for the summer holidays, the ultimate and decisive factor is – price.

This is exactly why well deliberated placement and management concept of the price list on the web-page presents one of the best tools to collect new leads (contact information of potential guests).

One of the ways in which this can be carried out is by removing the price list from the web-page thus encouraging the guest to use direct contact with the renter to gain access to the information they require.

The second option is to offer information (the price list) and to ask for something in return for it (guest contact information – e-mail or phone number). This means that if a guest is truly interested in renting, he or she will give the renter an opportunity to contact them and present their offer and that is the ultimate goal of this data collection.

Real life example

Just before the start of this year’s summer vacation season, we decided to run a small test via our web-page that we use to advertise and offer accommodation in our facilities.

We did not change the appearance of our web-page, we simply made some “under the surface” alterations and expanded the functionality of the Newsletter field that was until then ignored by our visitors. Along with the standard function of that field which adds a typed in e-mail address to our Newsletter list we added an automatic download/preview of accommodation price lists that were previously unavailable on the web-page.

After just a few days, we already had our first visitor that looked at the price list, and then the number of collected information continued increasing steadily.

Display of increase in the number of collected e-mail addresses of Croatian speaking visitors

Display of increase in the number of collected e-mail addresses of English speaking visitors

It is important to highlight the fact that the number of inquiries received via e-mail and the web contact form has not decreased due to this move, it remained the same in comparison to the previous period and to last year’s vacation season.

We compared the e-mails we have gathered with those that were used to contact us directly in order to determine how many of them were duplicates. Still, only a few e-mail addresses were on both lists and that was a good sign as it implied that we gathered information from those visitors who were not looking to contact us directly.

Be careful! Be transparent

I am certain that the number of collected e-mails would have been even greater had we used some sort of a “bait and switch” strategy with the e-mail address input field by writing “download the apartments price list for free” next to it, but this would have undoubtedly caused a negative reaction with a significantly larger portion of our visitors after being contacted directly by us or after receiving our Newsletter without expecting it.

This is why we decided to be transparent so we placed the following text next to the e-mail address input field:

“Download the price list and sign up for our newsletter:”

By doing this we made it clear for everyone that by downloading the price list they were also automatically agreeing to receive additional offers in the future.

My advice for anyone who decides to do this or something similar is to also remain transparent with their intentions and to let the visitors decide whether they wish to provide their contact information.

Because in the end, the quality of gathered leads is far more important than their quantity.

Do you gather information from potential guests through a web-page and if so, which approach do you use and how pleased are you with the results?