Direct booking doesn't just mean via your website, the telephone also continues to provide value, here's a little case study to demonstrate.
The top line is that California-based Ayres Hotels has been enrolled with TripAdvisor Business Listings for two years and seen significant gains.
But, looking beyond all the return-on-investment stuff (interesting though it is), what's more noteworthy is some research carried out by Forrester in May on the economic impact of Business Listings for the 20-strong boutique hotel group.
Forrester looked at a range of data including the number of bookings made through a specific phone number to reveal that calls generated nearly twice the number of bookings compared to website click-throughs.
In financial terms, that's $686,700 of phone business versus the $335,174 coming via clicks to the website per year.
Interesting to note that the group has earned $16.43 for every $1 invested in business listings although figures released by TripAdvisor in February show some Listings subscribers earning up to $64 for every $1 spent.
For further insight on the importance of the telephone for direct bookings, see this piece from Tnooz node Patrick Landman.
NB: Carousel image of telephone via Shutterstock.