Your hotel booking engine is vital to your online success, We all know the importance of data but what is even more important is that the data you are tracking is correct, Your success hinges on not only the figures in your account but also that the figures you are seeing are accurate.

Most of the Independent and boutique hotels rely on third-party booking engines or third-party vendors for recording bookings and revenue. Unfortunately, sometimes third-party vendors, IT people or web developers don’t take the time to understand proper implementation of the e-commerce code, and this is where we step in to troubleshoot and fix the problem fast.

You’re about to launch a website, and you’ve ensured everything on your end is streamlined and ready to go. You did everything you were supposed to do on your end, including giving the web developer the tracking code for conversions to install. Suddenly, it hits you â€" it wasn’t anything you did. The tracking code wasn’t installed properly.

After a website goes live, there are numerous possible reasons why the e-commerce conversion code isn’t attributing correctly to the proper channel. Some of the common problems we see with implementation are as follows.

1. The code is not placed on the correct page.
2. The code is placed on the correct page but not in the right place of the website. (In header, footer or body tags.)
3. Additional JavaScript code has been added via the CMS or application delivery infrastructure that may have changed the e-commerce code.
4. The code is for remarketing in Google AdWords and not the conversion code.
5. Customization of the code is wrong. (This is a major issue and needs to be resolved by tweaking the code according to the site changes and upgrades.)
6. Hotel and booking engine website needs are tracked by a customized cross domain tracking code. Implementation of this code is wrong.
7. The code is placed on the correct page, but is not copied exactly as it should be.

Here is a brief example of when the code is not copied exactly as it should be even though it was placed on the correct page. (Problem number 7).

During our process of routine expert checking, we noticed that the revenue attribution was not flowing correctly in Google Analytics reports. A print shot from the Google Analytics report here shows clearly that the paid search revenue was attributing towards direct traffic.

In the case of this client, the revenue and transaction pattern was attributed to almost 80% direct traffic, 15% paid search traffic and the rest from other sources. (There was only one transaction of $151 revenue before this issue occurred.)

When our experts analyzed the situation in detail, we found out that, while upgrading the booking engine site, the booking engine developer did not exactly copy a very small snippet of the code as it should be (line 46) and it completely brought down the revenue reports data.

The correct code was as follows, which needed the Hotel website name in the [‘ ‘] square brackets, to track the cross domain tracking correctly.

After troubleshooting, the issue was resolved with this correction and the latest Google Analytics report now clearly shows the revenue pattern of 80% and 15% from direct and paid search channels.

Even though it seems like a very small error, it is a time-consuming process to analyze and pinpoint the exact issue from the whole nitty-gritty of website coding. But we at Lodging Interactive have the technology, processes and people in place to monitor and troubleshoot complicated issues.

Through our experts and state of the art technology, the booking engine source code and hotel website are constantly supervised so that information gleaned from website interactions and bookings can help boost ROI and increase bookings. In this way, the client is able to make more informed choices with plenty of information to back up their decisions.

About Lodging Interactive

Headquartered in Parsippany, NJ, Lodging Interactive is a full-service digital marketing and social media engagement agency exclusively servicing the hospitality industry. Through its web design and search optimization division as well as its CoMMingle Social Media Division, Lodging Interactive provides effective Internet marketing services to hundreds of branded and independent properties as well as management companies, restaurants and spas. CoMMingle has established itself as the largest provider of reputation management services for the hospitality industry, handling over 200,000 guest review responses. The company also offers fully managed Live Chat agents for hotel websites through its LiveChatForHotels.com division.

Lodging Interactive is an HSMAI Adrian Award winner, and has won awards from the International Academy of Visual Arts, Interactive Media Awards, Horizon Interactive Awards, Web Marketing Association, Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts, and Travel Weekly’s Magellan Awards have recognized Lodging Interactive as an industry leader.

Lodging Interactive is a proud supporter of the Hotel Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI) and the company’s president, DJ Vallauri, currently serves on the Board of Directors of HSMAI’s New York Chapter and is a Forbes.com Agency Council contributor. For more information, please contact sales@lodginginteractive.com, 877-291-4411 or visit the company’s website: www.lodginginteractive.com