Why Hotel Marketing Starts With a Great Website

Websites play a fundamental role in assisting hotel marketing and sales teams reach their conversion goals.

For most hotel marketing teams, their website is their main marketing tool and sales funnel. It should ideally act as a non-stop shop for content (information and images) about the hotel’s accommodation, location and facilities and free up your reception staff from unnecessary phone enquiries. A quality web design must also reflect the luxury of the hotel and serves an important role in facilitating hotel bookings – find out more.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO does start with a great hotel website. It’s best if an SEO consultant works with a your hotel marketing team in the initial design process. This may mean collaborating on the site architecture, recommending a search-friendly content management system (CMS), helping add Google Analytics to the website and advising on the placement and positioning of images, copy, call to action buttons and so forth.

Technical infrastructure

When visitors land on your pages via a well-structured SEO campaign, they expect to see information that reflects their search criteria ie if they have searched for a ‘luxury hotel Sydney’, that is exactly what they want to find. You have about three seconds to capture attention, earn their trust (see below) and entice them to explore further. If your website does not fulfil their search criteria, they will simply bounce* to a competitor’s website.

Trustworthy website design

As we always say, it’s not always the first click you need to worry about, it’s the second one. If you have discovered through your web analytics that you have a high bounce rate, your website design may be a contributing factor. There are many ways that a hotel marketing team can help create a trustworthy hotel website design – after all travellers like to book hotels they trust. This includes enhancing the design quality by:

• adding an easy to use navigation system
• checking there are no broken links
• updating and adding original content (see below)
• uploading large clear pictures of rooms and facilities
• ensuring contact details are easy to find (see below)
• integrating online booking systems (see below)
• adding privacy statements and terms and conditions
• including reviews and testimonials.

Hotel content

Hotel content is another important factor for hotel marketing teams. Optimised landing pages can boost your Search Engine visibility and drive pre-qualified traffic to your website but the end goal of engaging hotel content is to lead a visitor on the path of conversion and increase hotel bookings. The hotel industry is fast moving and hotel websites needs to be continually updated to reflect current room rates and special offers.

Mobile compatibility

Savvy hotel marketing teams need to be able to capture the mobile market with a mobile-compliant website specifically designed for travellers in transit, as more people book accommodation on the fly. This includes factors such as the load speed of the website, easy-to-use site navigation, simplified booking processes, click-to-call buttons, minimised design and imagery and optimised for high Search Engine visibility (mobile SEO).

Quality images

The quality of images on your hotel website can make or break your hotel marketing campaigns – sad but true. Whether you are running a small bed or breakfast or a large scale hotel, invest in taking professional photos of your hotel and facilities. They can be used time and time again across all your online and offline marketing campaigns. Travellers want to see large, clear images of your hotel rooms, facilities and location.

Online booking engines

Your hotel marketing team has done all the hard work in driving traffic to your website but you can lose sales to other travel sites if your website does not have an online booking engine. By creating an integrated solution which enables customers to book directly on your website, you can take control of your booking process, reduce commissions to third party websites, increase the number of hotel bookings and maximise your conversion rate.

Hotel marketing may start with a great website but ideally it should end in a traveller making an enquiry or booking accommodation via your site. Contact us at Hotel Website Designers to speak to one of our online market consultants specialised in the hotel and tourism industry. Find out how we can design or re-brand your website and help your hotel marketing team in promoting and increasing exposure for your hotel property.

* The bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.

Here at Hotel Website Designers, our team of Hotel Web Design experts have a clear and demonstrable track record of proven results and deliver innovative, award winning hotel design and web development on time and on budget. Make an online enquiry or call us today to discover the best hotel web design and development services for your accommodation, lodging or resort needs.

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