Having a website these days is one of the important things in any business. It works as your unique business card in the digital world. For hotels, it is quite mandatory to have one.
Guests check the website before booking any property. It is one of the vital aspects influencing their decision.
There is nothing better for any hotel than having an attractive website. And for that, you can invest in a certain website design templates. But with that, it also needs to be business oriented.
The main purpose of a website in the hospitality industry is to increase revenue through channelising direct bookings. But for a better conversion rate, it is very essential to invest in hotel website optimisation.
In this blog, I’m going to guide you through various tricks for hotel website optimisation.
Table of contents
Before beginning, let’s understand:
What is the importance of having a website in the hospitality industry?
Websites play a major role in this era of digitalisation. Expecting a high volume of online bookings without a website is like, waiting for fruits without planting any tree.
As per stats by sabrehospitality.com,
21% of guests prefer to book via the hotel's website.
This shows, if you don’t have an optimised brand website for your property, you’d tend to lose around 21% of your annual revenue. Needless to say, you can self-estimate the loss incurred.
Hence, to achieve a better inflow of business, you must invest in a brand website.
How to optimise hotel websites for more bookings?
Just having a brand website is not enough. You need to ensure that it achieves its purpose of providing you with maximum bookings.
Here are 9 easy ways for hotel website optimisation to achieve the desired results.
1. Focus on your hotel website’s design
An unattractive and unorganised website will drive your guests away. Thus, you should check if your hotel website is:
- Visually appealing.
- Easy to use, understand and navigate through.
- Conveys the right message.
To make your website appealing, try to use contrasting elements and themes. It should be eye-catching so that the guests would spend more time on your webpages.
Do not overfill it with details. Ensure that it is organised and has a sitemap to help guests find the specific information they are looking for. It’s advised to have a decluttered website for ease of understanding and navigation.
So, to increase hotel website conversion rate during optimisation, you should check for white spaces.
In simpler terms, see if your website conveys the right message to the visitors. Ensure you don’t leave them baffled with too much input, just stick to one motive; that is – “Book with us”.
2. Use visuals
It’s a simple truth, that you believe what you see. So is with the guests.
High-quality photos are recommended for capturing guests’ attention. Most hoteliers invest in professional photography for this.
If you don't want to burn a hole in your pocket, simply use - ‘Capturing and enhancing process’.
All you have to do is click some pictures from your smartphone, and use any photo editor to enhance them. But don’t overdo it, just adjust for clarity, sharpness, lighting and contrast.
Here are some of our recommended apps: Adobe Photoshop Express, Google Snapseed and Adobe Lightroom.
You can also use videos describing your hotel and nearby places. Try creating some vlogs (video + blogs) on your hotel’s YouTube channel and get them embedded on your website.
Due to COVID-19, many hotels are showcasing their safety measures. You can record some small clips such as hotel staff wearing masks and gloves, sanitization of each guest and room before check-in or check-out and so on.
You can use that video on your website. This will boost visitors’ confidence and eventually turn them into potential guests. It’s recommended to create a separate page to address how your hotel is ensuring maximum safety for guests after pandemic.
Our free COVID-19 website templates might help you here.
Moreover, you can record some small clips such as hotel staff wearing masks and gloves, sanitization of each guest and room before check-in or check-out and so on.
This will boost visitors’ confidence and eventually turn them into potential guests.
3. Make it mobile-friendly
Generally, people avoid using a laptop or tablet to search for anything in the middle of a journey. Let it be searching for a hotel to stay in, checking reviews, or navigating to the destination, people mostly use smartphones.
It’s necessary for you to optimise your website for being mobile-friendly. A hotel website with a desktop-only view will not work smoothly on a smartphone.
It’ll have multiple glitches such as irregular display of content, missing action tabs, improper functioning and so on. This will put a negative impression on your guests and hamper your booking flow.
A website optimised for mobile will be convenient to use, easy to navigate through and achieve its purpose of contribution in direct reservation.
4. Integrate with booking engine
What’s the point of having a website that can’t assist you with the bookings?
Let’s say a guest visits your website and is interested to make a reservation at your property. He searches for a “Book Now” widget but is unable to find one.
So eventually, he’ll visit any OTA, search for your property, and book a room from there. You end up giving a huge TAC (Travel Agent Commission) from your room revenue. This could’ve been avoided.
Installation of a booking engine is a MUST. It will help in channelising your revenue flow by increasing your hotel website’s conversion rate.
5. Enable review widget
A review widget is a beneficial tool for hotels. It helps them in showcasing their positive feedback to guests.
Rather than searching for them on other pages, guests will find them on your website itself. You know that reviews do impact guests’ booking decisions.
You can opt for the TripAdvisor review widget. Most hotels prefer going with that.
Just one or two reviews won’t help, it’s important that you collect enough reviews to promote them correctly on all the channels.
Having a review widget without enough reviews is similar to owning a hotel with zero guests.
6. Use chatbots
What if a visitor on your website has any query? Obviously, he would try to connect with you. But, you might not be available at all times. So, for such scenarios having a chatbot facility available on your website can assist them round the clock.
It’ll enable you to capture all such leads and assist your guests with their inquiries. Nowadays, artificial intelligence-based virtual assistance guides visitors to book the hotel from the website itself.
The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas introduced to its guests “Rose – Digital Concierge”. It is an SMS chatbot developed by R/GA, a known technological firm based out in the USA. As per the testimonial shared by the President of ‘The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas’,
[Rose’s] playful personality has wooed hotel guests who booked directly into spending 37% more than guests who do not engage with her.
So you see, how having a chatbot installed can pave a way to boost hotel website conversion rate.
7. Develop quality content
Invest in better content. It could be anything from your hotel’s about us section to the description of rooms. Remember, if the content is not written well, it won’t have an essential impact on your guests.
Your content is not only responsible for convincing guests, but it also affects your SEO as it generates traffic for your website.
Poor quality of content will have flaws such as lack of keywords, readability issues, unclear presentation of details and so on. Get your content written by any professional, as it provides better visibility which directly affects your revenue generation via the website.
Another thing you can do is:
Invest in blogs
I know, it may sound like a cliched thing, but yes blogs are a must-have on your website. I’m not asking you to go gaga over them. Just one blog per week would do good.
There’s no such limitation to the topics. You can choose whatever subject you like such as local delicacies, famous sightseeings in your area or an event happening in your hotel and many more.
Before publishing, check if it’s optimised for SEO. You can also put some images and if possible try interlinking them with your website.
8. Call to action on each page
In the hospitality industry, websites are a source of direct bookings. The ‘call to book’ option should always be available on the websites for this.
But having it just on a single page is not enough. Keep a check that all the pages highlighting your hotel’s facilities, room details and services should have this CTA (call to action) button enabled.
Also, see if the landing page is accurately mapped with the link and is working properly. You never know what will trigger guests’ decision, be it any specific facility your hotel offers or the quality of room in the pictures.
If focused on this aspect, it’ll help you to boost the hotel website conversion rate.
9. Optimise page loading speed
Nothing is as bad as a slow loading website. If your website’s page loading time is not up to the mark, it’ll not only hamper your guests’ experience but will also drop your search results ranking.
Google has certain algorithms for ranking web pages, and the loading speed is among them. Thus, do keep an eye on the loading speed of your page. If it’s not idle then consider this factor during the hotel website optimisation.
Conclusion
Having a website is not a big deal. But having a result-delivering website is important. For a hotel, it is responsible for making and breaking its image.
It facilitates bookings as well as attracts your potential guests. It is better to opt for your hotel website optimisation for conversions. And if you’ve not started it doing it now, you know the repercussions.
