Aró Digital Internet Booking Engine and Opera Web Services

The Aró Digital Internet Booking Engine (IBE) is now fully certified for Oracle Opera Web Services (OWS) integration — another step in Aró Digital's ongoing push to keep improving the platform. Our multi-property IBE is already live with Imperial Hotels London on OWS, with a rollout to further Opera clients planned over the coming months.

Travellers have grown steadily more comfortable booking directly with a hotel, especially as OTAs continue to draw criticism over rigid refund and cancellation policies. That shift makes this a strong moment to lean into your guest relationships and capture the full value of direct booking.

Convert Lookers Into Bookers

Browsing turns into booking the moment your booking engine feels like it actually belongs to your brand. The Aró Booking Engine is built to:

• Increase your hotel's visibility to luxury guests and drive more conversions through a polished booking experience
• Maximise revenue through offers, upsells, and packages
• Improve profit through low-commission bookings
• Keep you in control of your guest relationships
• Support a loyalty programme
• Deliver a strong user experience from the first visit through to a completed booking

What Actually Drives Conversion

You've already spent real effort — and real money — getting guests to your website. Converting as many of them as possible into bookings is what makes that investment pay off. The Aró Booking Engine is built specifically for independent luxury hotels, keeping the guest experience front and centre to drive bookings through your own site rather than a third party's.

We've studied data from hundreds of hotels around the world — city hideaways, country houses, beach resorts — and worked with our client advisors to identify what actually moves website conversion rates. The features below are ones our testing shows genuinely work:

• Upsell features
• Gift voucher integration
• Special offer integration
• Urgency messaging
• Discount codes
• Quick load times

Every transaction is secured through PCI-compliant integration with major payment gateways, with instant payment guaranteed. A loyalty function can be layered in to incentivise repeat bookings, and comprehensive reporting lets you track revenue and measure the effect of any change you make.

A Seamless, On-Brand Booking Experience

The Aró direct booking system adapts fully to your brand and website, offering guests a reservation process that's simple, quick, secure, and intuitive. It strengthens your digital strategy with:

• Channel manager integration
• Multilingual options
• Multiple currencies
• A privilege login function
• Derived rate set-up

And it reinforces your brand positioning through:

• Seamless web integration
• A superior user experience
• Luxury branding throughout
• In-depth reporting
• A competitive commission fee

Mobile-First by Design

Most of us carry the web in our pockets now, ready the instant we need to find or book something — and for an independent hotel, mobile is increasingly where guests meet your website for the first time. That first impression shapes whether they go on to book with you. Guests may touch up to four devices over the course of a booking, but well over 65% ultimately book on mobile.

We test and retest the Aró booking engine on every device to keep the booking experience as easy as possible, and we're confident it delivers the strongest mobile conversion rates in the independent hotel market. Mobile-specific features include:

• A mobile A/B testing strategy focused on real user needs
• Booking forms tailored to mobile users
• A fast mobile experience
• Clear, call-to-action-led design
• A five-day booking view

The Takeaway

The Aró Booking Engine is built and continually optimised so your direct booking strategy performs at its best. Mobile-first design captures every opportunity on the go through a seamless three-step guest journey, the best available offer is promoted directly on your site, and multilingual and multi-currency support means every guest gets the same quality of experience.

If you'd like a closer look at what separates a strong booking engine from an average one, our guide to choosing a hotel booking engine is a useful next read. To find out more, get in touch with our team.