Need Mexican/Caribbean Hotels and Resorts Booking Engine

indie program that converts reasonably well

[old_expat]

I need a good indie program from a hotel booking engine that converts well without the bs "loyalty" scams and cookie overwriting.

I'm getting low, but pretty well-targeted traffic that is growing steadily. Problem is, Lodging.com is not converting *at all* even though I have good intro paragraphs and thumbnails.

I don't mind using separate engines for different regions.

Any recommendations?

I really don't want to use Hotels.com, although I am an affiliate.

[cornwall]

D

I think I have tried them all, and there really seems to be very little difference between any of them!

I don't know whether the way people (mainly Americans) book in the Caribbean, means less use the web than in other regions.

[old_expat]

kind of a deja vu. ;)

I guess I'm hoping for more of a local engine similar to what sawadee is for Thailand.

1900+ information requests and not 1 booking?

[cornwall]

Broadly one seems to get in the range 0.5% to 2.5%

Damned if I can work out why the variation!

But you should certainly be getting 10 to 40 bookings from that number (1900)!

[jeep98]

Do you know the country of origin of your users? Is it possible that the majority of them are coming from foreign countries and aren't seeing what they expect at Lodging.com (e.g. local language, local currency pricing, etc.)?

[robho]

Lodging.com doesn't exactly convert well for me either.

For a recent time period, I've had 9000 info requests, 650 availability requests, 4 bookings. For the previous one, it was 5000 info, 250 avail, just one booking, and even worse before that.

However, some of the bookings have been of a decent size (one for $5k+), so it does make a little money.

As a user, I'd find the non-refundable nature of their bookings a reason not to book. I usually use engines like that, opodo, expedia, etc to find names of places that have deals and then look for their direct website or call them - to get the same deal or better, but flexible and with direct communication to avoid misunderstandings.