Free coffee and Wi-Fi as reasons to book: no significant effect
Test run byOnline DialogueCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsHighlighting free coffee and free Wi-Fi on Van der Valk's reservations overview page had no significant effect on conversion.
Online Dialogue ran this multi-variant test for the Dutch hotel group around 2009. The result is treated as flat.
- Conversion rate: no significant effect, per the source. The result is inconclusive.
- No figures, sample size or confidence level are shared.
- In the same test, a clear booking button lifted conversions by at least 13%, and extra deal promotion lowered them.
The change
Free coffee and Wi-Fi highlighted as reasons to book direct
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The reservations overview page with no mention of free extras.
Variant
Free coffee and free Wi-Fi were highlighted on the page as reasons to book directly with Van der Valk.
Why it likely came out this way
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Free coffee and Wi-Fi may be too small to change a hotel decision by the time someone is on the reservations page.
- Many hotels offered the same perks, so they may not have stood out as a reason to book.
- The test may not have had enough traffic in this arm to detect a small effect.
Caveats: Multi-variant test that tested each change alone and all together; the source reports no significant effect and no figures. Hotel booking site (travel, treated here as lead-gen). The test dates from around 2009, when the program began. Sample size, duration and confidence are not shared.
Who ran it
Online Dialogue ran this test and published the results (Online Dialogue case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Online Dialogue →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we highlight free perks like coffee and Wi-Fi, then more visitors will book directly because they see extra value.
- Primary metric
- Bookings per visitor
- Guardrails
- Booking flow completion rate
- Average booking value
- Who should test it
- Booking businesses with perks that are rare or valuable to their guests. Test perks that actually set you apart. Common extras like Wi-Fi are unlikely to move bookings on their own.
Questions
Do free perks increase direct hotel bookings?
Small perks often don't. In this test, free coffee and Wi-Fi made no significant difference.
Perks that are rare or valuable, like free breakfast or late checkout, may do more.
What does 'no significant effect' mean?
The test couldn't tell the variant apart from the original with confidence.
The change may have done nothing, or its effect was too small to detect.
How do I pick which benefits to highlight?
Ask guests why they chose you and what nearly stopped them.
Highlight what sets you apart, not what every competitor also offers.