Getting prospective customers to your website can be an expensive process. Once you have them, you need to keep them there and focused on the booking process.

A leak is an unintended entrance or escape. Make sure visitors are not leaking from your website, as it could be costing you bookings and or commission.

There are various places you can leak traffic and bookings to. Many properties put a TripAdvisor link on their websites, with the intention, no doubt, of simply showing off their great reviews. Why not – TripAdvisor can give visitors confidence in your property.

However, what happens when the customer clicks the TripAdvisor link? That’s where you may potentially lose the customer (a leak), as you’ve no control over what the link shows. Your customer is now on TripAdvisor ‘s site and TripAdvisor can do with them as they please. A certain percentage of them will never come back to your site and another percentage could easily end up booking a property nearby. After all, there’s usually lots to tempt them! If you have a TripAdvisor link on your site, I suggest you try and see how easy it is to book another property.

This leaking possibility is a fact that is true of all links away from your website, so you must make sure you are happy with what the customer sees when they get to the other end of that link – remember, this can change at any time. What’s more, with all the tracking and social media plugins, you might never really know what TripAdvisor (or a similar site) is showing your former customer.