Travel demand has returned strongly since the post-pandemic reopening, and yes, we're still saying ‘post-pandemic’ in 2026 because apparently that's going to follow us around forever. Hotels are fuller than they've been in years, flight searches remain consistently high, and destination intent continues to rise as people make up for lost time. The travel bug inside us is strong, our will to explore is bursting to come out and our wish to simply be somewhere else after a period of enforced domesticity is remarkably resilient.
Yet despite this momentum, some hotel brands and travel companies are seeing direct digital revenue plateau. The gap between demand and realised bookings has a cause that is now visible.
What is booking burnout?
Booking burnout occurs when travellers experience friction, overwhelm or stress during the online booking process. More often than not, this leads them to abandon direct channels in favour of third-party booking platforms (OTAs). For hotels and tourism businesses, it translates directly into lost margin and reduced control over guest relationships.
At the end of 2025, YouGov research revealed that 71 per cent of travellers find the online booking process overwhelming or stressful. This represents far more than a minor irritation; it's a commercial fault line running through the industry. When guests experience friction, uncertainty or fatigue in the booking journey, they hesitate. When they hesitate, they default to third-party platforms that feel simpler in the moment, even at the cost of margin.
We call this booking burnout. Whilst it sits quietly in the corner, inside digital journeys, it steadily erodes direct performance. For commercial leaders, the question is no longer whether demand exists, but rather whether your digital experience is doing enough to convert that demand before someone else does.
Our upcoming session brings together senior leaders who have tackled this challenge directly. The goal is practical: understand where friction hides, see how leading brands have removed it, and take away approaches that can drive double-digit growth in direct channels.
Why are hotel direct bookings declining despite high travel demand?
Independent travel trend reports continue to project sustained growth in global travel spend over the next few years. At the same time, travel technology investment is accelerating as brands respond to rising digital expectations. The hospitality sector is modernising rapidly, though many booking journeys still reflect legacy structures, internal silos and fragmented data.
Travellers are now accustomed to smooth, personalised digital experiences in retail, banking and entertainment. When travel booking feels slow, unclear or repetitive by comparison, patience runs thin. YouGov's findings quantify what digital teams in the hotel industry have suspected for some time: stress and confusion are common reactions to online booking, and that stress carries a price.
Price sensitivity remains high amongst leisure travellers, whilst guests compare options quickly and seek reassurance. They want clarity on value, cancellation terms, loyalty benefits and payment options. If that reassurance is missing, they step away, reappearing on a third-party site where the path feels shorter, even if the end cost is higher.
The result for hotel brands is lost direct margin, rising acquisition costs and weaker control over the guest relationship. None of this is inevitable, however. It's a design and operational challenge that tourism businesses can solve.
What causes digital friction in hotel booking systems?
Digital friction can manifest in several familiar ways across hotel and leisure booking platforms:
- Too many steps between search and confirmation
- Inconsistent content across brand and property pages
- Limited personalisation despite rich data
- Slow page load on mobile
- Confusing rate presentation
- Repetitive data entry
- Gaps between marketing promise and booking reality
Each issue seems small in isolation, but together they create fatigue. Fatigue leads to abandonment, which in turn leads to leakage towards OTA channels that have optimised every step of their purchase path.
For commercial leaders in hospitality and tourism, this goes beyond a user experience problem. It's a revenue conversion problem affecting lifetime value, loyalty penetration and cost of sale. Fixing it requires coordination across marketing, digital product, revenue management and operations. When leading hotel brands coordinate this, what becomes possible is demonstrated with exceptional results.
Case study: How Hilton improved hotel booking conversion rates
Hilton recognised that improving conversion rates required more than incremental design updates; they needed a way to test, learn and deploy booking journeys faster across markets and brands, which led to their Landing Page Builder programme with 383.
At a high level, the initiative allowed Hilton's revenue management teams to create and refine targeted landing experiences aligned to traveller intent. Rather than sending guests through a generic funnel, the new approach made it possible to match message, content and next step more closely to why a traveller had clicked in the first place.
The impact is strategic for the hotel group: faster experimentation, clearer guest journeys, reduced steps between inspiration and reservation and a stronger ability to align acquisition spend with conversion outcomes. The lesson for hospitality brands is straightforward: precision in the path to purchase unlocks growth that acquisition alone cannot deliver.
In our travel and hospitality webinar, we'll share the thinking behind this shift and explore how similar principles can be applied in other hotel and travel environments without rebuilding platforms from scratch.
How Best Western Hotels GB achieved consistency across franchise properties
Best Western Hotels GB faced a different challenge. With a large franchise estate, digital inconsistency across properties was creating uneven guest experiences. For travellers, brand expectation and on-property reality didn't always align, whilst for commercial teams, that inconsistency weakened direct booking performance and brand trust.
Under Chris Bowling's leadership, BWH GB re-engineered key elements of the digital guest journey. The focus was on creating consistent, reliable booking experiences that reflected real traveller behaviour and expectations. The work involved aligning franchisee participation, modernising templates and improving data-driven decision-making around content and conversion optimisation.
The results included a 32 percent year-on-year revenue uplift and meaningful conversion improvement. More importantly, the programme created a repeatable framework for continuous optimisation rather than one-off redesigns, turning digital from a cost centre into a growth engine for the hotel chain.
Read more: TravelDailyNews
How can hotels personalise the booking experience to match traveller intent?
Booking burnout extends beyond interface design into emotional context. A leisure traveller booking a family holiday wants reassurance, whilst a business traveller wants speed and a luxury guest wants confidence in their spend. When hotel booking journeys don't reflect intent, friction appears.
Hospitality technology now makes intent alignment achievable at scale through:
- Personalised content
- Artificial Intelligence to support personlisation
- Dynamic offer presentation
- Smarter search and filtering
- Clear loyalty messaging
- Streamlined mobile checkout and integrated payment options.
Travel trend research by WTTC shows that travellers increasingly expect this level of personalisation and clarity as standard, rewarding hotel brands that provide it with loyalty, higher trust and repeat purchase.
The opportunity for commercial leaders in tourism lies in connecting three elements: rich customer data, flexible digital tools and a culture of continuous testing. When these combine, booking journeys becomes easier, and when booking becomes easier, direct margins grow.
What strategies can reduce OTA dependency and increase direct bookings?
Our upcoming session is designed to move from theory to practical application for hotel and tourism professionals.
Attendees will gain clarity on where conversion losses occur most often in hospitality booking systems. You’ll see how leading hotel brands have approached friction removal and learn how to identify operational causes behind drop-off whilst building internal roadmaps that deliver measurable impact.
We'll also explore strategies to strengthen guest retention while reducing the cost of sale as we move through 2026. With travel demand projected to remain high, the hotel brands that succeed will be those that convert more of the demand they already attract through optimised direct booking channels.
Learning from peers
The session brings together hospitality industry leaders who have delivered tangible results in direct revenue growth:
- Chris Bowling will share how Best Western Hotels reshaped digital journeys to match traveller behaviour and what remains on the roadmap for the franchise network.
- Joanne Wiggan will offer the perspective of a premium travel brand navigating shifting demand patterns whilst protecting margin and growing direct channels.
- Andy Curry will share his experiences of working with Best Western to improve their digital journeys and the overall customer experience of these leading brands.
Their experience provides grounded insight into what works in hotel revenue management, what takes longer than expected, and where commercial leaders in tourism should focus next.
Join leading hotel professionals tackling booking burnout
Travel demand is there, hospitality technology is advancing quickly, and guests are ready to book. The missing piece for many hotel and leisure brands is removing the friction that stands in the way of direct revenue growth.
Booking burnout is now measurable, with YouGov's findings revealing the scale of the challenge facing the tourism industry. Meanwhile, Hilton and Best Western Hotels demonstrate the scale of the opportunity. The path forward is clear for hotel brands willing to act.
If you're responsible for commercial performance, digital experience, revenue management or direct booking growth in the hospitality or tourism sector, this session will equip you with ideas, evidence and practical approaches to deliver change inside your organisation.
Register now to secure your place and learn how to beat booking burnout, reduce OTA dependency and unlock double-digit direct revenue growth for your travel and hospitality brand.
