Hospitality brands invest heavily in their websites with great pride and focus. Yet too often the end result is a static shop window. The reality? Most web visitors browse, leave, and return very infrequently, with no identification of who visited, no data captured, no booking made, and no way to re-engage.
If revenue growth is the goal, it’s time to rethink how to use your website, and how it can turn one-time guests into regulars. Guestwise’s Activate product turns passive browsing into active engagement, capturing valuable guest data, driving more bookings, and giving you visibility over what your website is contributing to revenue.
Why It’s Time to Rethink
- Anonymous traffic is wasted traffic. The majority of visitors leave no trace. Activate changes that by turning unknown visitors into identifiable guests.
- Acquisition is expensive. Every click to your site costs, whether through PPC, social ads or partnerships. Not converting those visitors, or at the very least getting them on your mailing list, is lost revenue.
- Personalisation is expected. Guests want experiences and offers that feel tailored, not one-size-fits-all. If email is personalised by segment, why is the web not doing the same for different guest cohorts?
- Revenue growth is in the margins. Small increases in consent capture or booking conversion compound into big gains across a portfolio of venues. A 1% change in bookings, or a 10% change in consent sign-ups, can mean thousands of pounds per venue across a year.
What Activate Does
Activate is a lightweight, easy-to-deploy script that you copy and paste into GTM (or the website header) and it unlocks three powerful capabilities:
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Capture the uncaptured. Smart prompts and consent capture flows convert up to 20% of previously anonymous visitors into identified, marketable contacts.
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Convert browsing into bookings. Behavioural nudges encourage guests to complete bookings, explore menus or sign up for offers, reducing drop-off at critical points in the journey.
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See the full picture. Built-in analytics connect on-site behaviour with downstream revenue signals like voucher redemption or Wi-Fi login, helping you understand which touchpoints and campaigns actually drive visits and growth.
Rethinking Guest Engagement in Practice
Four ways to use Activate in your digital guest strategy:
|
Stage |
Traditional approach |
Rethought with Activate |
Revenue impact |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Awareness |
Paid campaigns drive traffic but visitors leave unidentified. |
Consent capture converts browsers into identifiable profiles. |
Larger, higher quality marketing database. |
|
Consideration |
Generic content for all. |
Behaviour-based prompts guide visitors towards bookings, menus or offers. |
Higher booking conversion rates. |
|
Conversion |
Guests abandon mid-flow. |
Targeted nudges such as “don’t miss out” prompts reduce abandonment. |
More confirmed bookings, fewer wasted clicks. |
|
Retention |
Post-visit engagement limited. |
Data captured via Activate flows straight into CRM for immediate follow-up. |
Repeat bookings and stronger loyalty. |
Activate × Engage: Abandoned Booking Recovery
Activate identifies who is on your site and what they attempted to do. Engage turns that intent into revenue with timely follow-ups across email and SMS. Together they power abandoned booking recovery at scale.
What is an abandoned booking?
A guest starts a reservation — selects date, time or party size, maybe adds contact details — but never confirms. Like abandoned carts in e-commerce, this is declared intent that stalls. It is lost revenue and a clear recovery opportunity.
Benchmarks to watch
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Conversion rate: share of total sessions that end in a completed booking. Typical range 5% to 10% depending on sub-sector.
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Abandonment rate: users who start the booking process but do not complete. Can be as high as 80% in some sectors.
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Recovery rate: share of abandoned bookings recovered by follow-ups. Averages 2% to 5%.
Three abandoned booking playbooks
|
Campaign type |
How it works |
Typical recovery |
|---|---|---|
|
Opted-in recovery |
Marketing email with a timely nudge and a link back to the booking, either generic or personalised to pre-fill date, time and party size. |
~3% of recipients complete the booking. |
|
No-marketing-consent follow-up |
Service email under legitimate interest about the incomplete booking with an option to resume. |
~4% of recipients complete the booking. |
|
Reward reminder |
Include an eligible offer or add one to create urgency. Link takes guests back to resume and redeem. |
~5% of recipients complete the booking. |
Real-world impact
“The power of abandoned booking emails has really surprised me. In just 12 weeks, across 4 venues, we have driven an additional £7.6k into the business. When stretched out over the year, that’s somewhere around £8.5k extra per site — all from just setting up one follow-up campaign. We are now looking at new ways to convert more from these super high-intent journeys.”
James Mobbs, Fractional Marketing Director, East Coast Concepts
On average, our abandoned booking programmes are delivering roughly two incremental bookings per site per week. Conversions happen every day of the week. Whilst some sessions fail due to availability, Wednesdays were the strongest converting day for abandoned booking emails last quarter.
Beyond table bookings
The same approach works for abandoned gift card purchases, room bookings and online orders. Activate identifies and tags the journey. Engage follows up with the right message on the right channel to bring guests back.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls
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Over-relying on generic paid media. Without conversion optimisation, spend is wasted.
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Collecting data without purpose. Activate ensures captured data is usable and connected to the next activity via CRM or paid social.
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Fragmented tools and systems. Activate integrates with loyalty, CRM and booking systems, so Engage can trigger compliant follow-ups without engineering lift.
The Results You Can Expect
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Up to 20% uplift in consent capture to grow your database, including Date of Birth capture where missing.
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Significant reduction in booking abandonment by nudging guests back to complete.
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Clearer attribution linking web traffic to incremental revenue through on-site and downstream signals.
Rethink Today, Grow Tomorrow
Revenue growth isn’t about doing more of the same. It’s about rethinking overlooked touchpoints you already own. Your website is one of the most valuable assets you have, but only if you use it to its full potential.
With Activate plus Engage, Guestwise helps you turn anonymous visitors into identified guests, reduce drop-offs, recover abandoned bookings, build a bigger marketing database and grow real revenue from web traffic.
👉 Ready to talk about the new approach? Book a personalised demo and see how Activate and Engage can turn intent into income within weeks.
