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The Booking Breaking Point
An independent research report on why UK hotels are losing customers at every stage of the booking journey, and what the data says hotels should do about it.
69%
of UK travellers have abandoned or restarted a hotel booking because something in the journey became confusing.
We asked 2,000 UK travellers why.
Every booking begins with a guest already imagining the stay.
Guests aren't choosing OTAs.
They're choosing ease.
A friction-filled booking journey doesn't cost hotels a guest, it costs them the booking. The traveller still checks in somewhere. What changes is where the value goes, and how much of it a hotel ever sees again.
- These are guests who had already decided to book with you. The journey itself introduced the doubt.
- Two-thirds of travellers struggle to add extras, despite saying they'd happily spend more.
- More than a quarter of guests who hit breaking point never come back, not a lost booking, a lost relationship.
- The next competitive advantage isn't the biggest marketing budget. It's the least friction.
Abandoned bookings aren't unusual, every ecommerce business experiences them. What makes these findings interesting is where the abandonment is happening. These are guests who have already decided they want to stay at your hotel.
Insight from across the industry
Independent industry voices
Jane Pendlebury
CEO
HOSPA
Jane leads HOSPA, the hospitality profitability and technology body supporting finance, revenue and asset management professionals across the sector. Her contribution brings an industry-wide perspective on how hotels are rethinking guest experience and commercial performance together.
Simon Maguire
Co-founder
Rockingham Partners
An independent hospitality consultant with more than 20 years leading commercial strategy for UK hotel brands. His contribution closes the report with an outside perspective on where hospitality needs to rethink the guest journey.
Profitroom insight
Patryk Luszcz
UK Regional Director
Profitroom
Patryk works with hotel groups and independents across the UK on direct booking performance. In the report, he explains why hotels are increasingly competing with every seamless digital experience a guest has had that day, not just the property down the road.
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Maria Macree
UK Sales Director
Profitroom
Maria has spent years helping hoteliers optimise their booking journeys. She shares why the best-performing hotels simplify decisions rather than add to them, and how that shows up directly in conversion.
Waldemar Antonowicz
Chief Product Officer
Profitroom
Waldemar leads Profitroom's product direction. In the report, he sets out why booking technology should surface the right information at the right moment, rather than adding more choice for guests to work through.
Laurence Wall
Customer Success Commercial Director
Profitroom
Laurence works closely with hotels on the guest relationship from first click onward. He explains why the booking engine is the true starting point of loyalty, long before a guest reaches the front desk.
Lucy Prothero
Enterprise Sales Director
Profitroom
Lucy works with larger hotel groups on their direct booking strategy. In the report, she highlights why pricing transparency throughout the journey, not just at checkout, has become a genuine driver of conversion.