Increase your direct bookings
We're inviting hotels and hotel groups to try something that has worked well for our hotels so far, which is putting their verified bed bug-safe label in the booking flow, right at the moment when guests decide where to stay. When Hotel GUESTapart in Aarhus and RUNO Hotel Porvoo did exactly that, and measured it against guests who didn't see the label, we were able to show proof of direct bookings rising by 8.4% and 12.5% respectively in their properties where the label did appear, without any change to the rooms, the rates or the booking process.
The experiment takes a single line of code to set up, runs quietly alongside your existing booking engine and gives you a clear answer in your own numbers. If your guests respond the way theirs did, you'll have found additional direct booking revenue in a promise your hotel is already keeping.
Guests weigh safety long before they book, usually without ever raising it with the hotel. Phocuswright's 2026 research across the US, UK and France found that pests like bed bugs are now travelers' single biggest concern when choosing a hotel, ahead of cleanliness and staff, and that most travellers quietly check reviews or search for reassurance before they commit. Valpas-certified hotels already verify a bed bug-safe stay in every room, every day, so the experiment is about letting guests see that assurance where it matters most to them.
Hotel GUESTapart, an 86-apartment design aparthotel in Aarhus, was one of the first hotels to show its bed bug-safe attribute in its own booking flow. Over three months, half of the visitors to its booking page saw the Valpas label while the other half saw the page as it had always been, and the guests who saw the label converted at 8.06% compared with 7.44% for those who didn't. That 8.4% relative lift was worth just over €2,000 a month in additional direct booking revenue, giving the hotel a 3x return on its certification.
"We did not change the room, the price or the booking process. We simply made an existing safety feature visible, and the guests who saw it converted at a higher rate." — Nicolaj Skafsgaard, CTO, Hotel GUESTapart
RUNO Hotel Porvoo, Finland's first MICHELIN Key hotel, ran the same test over eight weeks this spring and saw an even stronger result, with visitors who saw the label booking direct 12.5% more often than those who didn't. For RUNO that meant around €1,800 a month in additional revenue, or roughly €32 per room per month against a certification cost of €8.25, which is a 4x return on an attribute the hotel already had in place.
What makes these results so encouraging is how different the two hotels are. One is an aparthotel whose guests are mostly Danish business travellers and families, and the other is a 56-room Art Nouveau design hotel welcoming international visitors, yet in both cases more guests chose to book direct once they could see their stay was verified bed bug-safe. That consistency is exactly why we want to see what the label can do for many more hotels.
Bed bug safety is fast becoming a booking attribute, in the same way Wi-Fi and non-smoking rooms did before it, and guests now look for it in reviews, in search and increasingly in AI tools. A traveller who asks Google's AI for a bed bug-safe hotel in Porvoo can find RUNO, and when they click through to book, the same verified label is there waiting for them in the booking flow. The experiment measures what that final moment of reassurance is worth to your hotel.
Setting it up is deliberately simple. The Valpas label sits as a small badge in the corner of your booking flow, where guests can click it to read that your hotel is Valpas-certified, bed bug-safe and pesticide-free, and it goes live with one tag on your website and booking engine. That tag now works across most major booking engines, including Mews and D-EDGE, so for most hotels there is very little for the web team to do.
Once the label is live, visitors to your booking page are split evenly, with half seeing the label and half seeing your page exactly as it is today. Because your rooms, prices and booking process stay the same for both groups, the label is the only difference between them, and every booking is recorded automatically as it happens, so the result is one you can trust and share with owners, investors or your commercial team. At the end of the test you'll know, in your own numbers, how many more guests booked direct and what that was worth in revenue.
We'd love your hotel to be among the next to try it. The experiment is open to Valpas-certified hotels and groups, who can get started straight away, as well as to hotels and groups considering certification who want to see the commercial case for themselves. There is very little risk in trying, because nothing about your rooms, rates or booking process changes, and you only keep the label on if the numbers show it's working for you.
Getting started takes four steps:
For hotel groups, it's a straightforward way to show owners and commercial teams what verified safety is worth before rolling the label out across a portfolio. For independent hotels, it turns a promise you already keep into proof you can use across your own marketing.
4-star and 5-star hotels have shown what happens when guests can see verified safety at the moment they book, and we're excited to see what your guests do with it.
To start your own booking label experiment, get in touch with the Valpas team at team@valpas.io.
