How to Make Your Hotel Website 2022 Ready?
Your hotel website is the face and voice of your brand, and that's where you maintain all the details about your hotel and offerings. Since it is the first thing anyone will see when browsing for your hotel, it is necessary that you offer visitors an interesting, educational, accessible, and easy-to-use website that encourages them to take action.
Here is a list of 7 ways to help you get more direct reservations by beating your competition.
Posting Different Content
A problem we notice with practically all hotels is that they fail to differentiate between content assets that should be put on their own channels, such as their website or mobile applications, and those that should be published on the travel agent's websites.
Hotels risk their chance to convert a customer to a direct booking by publishing similar content, such as pictures, writing, and even videos, on multiple online platforms.
Did you know that around 52% of users will first check the official hotel website before reserving an OTA site?
This is opportunity hotels are missing out on. When a prospective tourist visits both the hotel website and the website of an online travel agent for the same hotel and finds the exact information in both places.
It's more likely that they'll make reservations through the online travel agency. This is a loss for hotels, as now they will have to pay a commission of 12–30% of the reservation price.
Hence, to maximise the chances of getting more direct reservations, hotels should differentiate the content posted on their website and other third-party mediators.
Update as Per Google Search Experience
Every webpage update should always take Google into account! Google's algorithm tweak in 2022 boosted a company's requirement for efficiency. Websites are a key factor in Google rankings, as in today's busy days no one will wait if a site takes a loading time of more than three seconds.
Some website-slowing problems include large image and video files, unnecessary coding, and so many extensions. To analyze the website, try Google's PageSpeed toolkits. Finally, hire a web developer to improve your website's performance.
The value of customer experience must not be understated by online marketers and website owners. Google’s algorithm suggests that website developers must prioritize factors such as page speed, engagement, secure surfing, and graphic reliability. If businesses like you don't, their websites may soon fall off Google's top page.
Never Underestimate the Power of Good Content
Tourists come for adventures, to create memories, and to connect with people they would otherwise never meet. Share the story and inspiration behind your hotel, and highlight the people behind your company.
You must concentrate mostly on the services your hotel offers, and don't forget to capture the locals and nearby tourist attractions to encourage travellers to book rooms with the hotel reservation system.
If you successfully create engaging content which showcases the adventures of your hotel and neighbourhood, potential customers will be hooked to their phones and tempted to be a part of your hotel’s journey. Such content is beneficial to your SEO and social media strategies since it offers readers information and increases brand loyalty.
You can win the support and trust of Google if you create quality content consistently on your hotel website. The website's home page, about page, and even blogs must be authentic and SEO friendly to rank in Google searches. It will help your hotel website drive tourists via an online hotel booking system.
Must Add High-Quality Graphics and Photos
Photos are a powerful strategy for your branding, which will make you stand out from your competitors. With almost more than one billion users using social media globally, it's obvious you must use high-quality graphics and pictures to attract tourists.
The photos that you show your customers must create a sense of what they can enjoy while vacationing at your hotel. In this context, you must invest in quality photographs and use them to design your hotel website. Keep in mind to include exterior views, interior pictures, bedrooms, and other hotel features such as public areas and the foyer in your photographs.
You can also highlight a variety of rich visuals to your visitors, such as 360-degree views of the hotel. That way tourists can adjust their viewpoints and enjoy a quick virtual tour of the hotel.
Also, making videos is indeed a wonderful technique to highlight your hotel and the services it offers. Providing raw footage of the hotel can also help develop trust with your audience, while also keeping visitors on your website for long durations.
These steps will ensure visitors on your website stay hooked and encourage them to make direct reservations.
Keep the Engagement Going
Getting a website and building a digital presence is of no value if no one engages with it.
Micro-interactions include spontaneous digital interactions that serve a specific function, such as engaging with the audience or entertaining the visitor. These are minor, unnoticed encounters that happen online and have the capacity to improve the experience and give your business a personality.
Micro-interactions on the hotel website may vary from mild features like icons on blogs to a drop-down bar panel, call-to-action links that change colour when you hold on to it, or pictures that shift while you browse.
These are small interactions that enable the visitor to access the hotel website and become a part of the overall experience. This type of hands-on involvement improves user engagement by engaging guests in a friendly and interactive environment. It will lead them to enjoy the hotel website booking engine part to book for their trip.
Not to Forget the SEO That Is Searchable by Voice
Content plays a huge part in influencing your hotel website performance, user-friendliness, or Google ranking, even if it isn't exactly website design. Website content designed for casual voice searches will become a prominent trend in 2022. All through the day, Siri, Google Home, and Alexa deliver replies to viewers, and the most popular answers come from reputable sources that fit the question.
Respond to the questions which you know your visitors commonly inquire about on your site in the same way that they ask them. The ideal places for answering queries are blog articles and FAQs. It’s an easy way to boost your search rankings while also helping your visitors.
Since voice assistants have become so famous nowadays, consider utilising them with regular text searches on your hotel website, both for efficiency and customer experience. It will also be accessible to those with challenges. After 2022, speech interfaces for web pages will become a reality in the near future.
Online Hotel Booking with Management and Information
Your hotel must also offer an online hotel booking management system on your hotel website, to take out the meditator like OTA. Every time a visitor lands on your website, you must convince them to book in advance with you, which you can do by providing a simple online booking engine.
It is indeed another thing to attract traffic to websites using SEO and online marketing and another to encourage visitors to take some action.
How Can AxisRooms Help You to Book Directly Through Your Hotel Website?
Another major issue most hotels experience is that visitors are just publicly visible when they have made an online reservation from the webpage. To put it another way, if they're only looking for a deal, many hotels don't have the technical expertise to know who are those visitors. Obviously, it requires specialised data-gathering possibilities on your hotel website to know who are those visitors.
This is where we can help you. The booking engine by AxisRooms option will help you manage your bookings, provide easy tax setup, allow only one login for all, offer multiple payment options, provide in-depth reporting and amazing promotions and deals, and a lot more
AxisRooms has a quick and safe online booking engine for travellers to book with a great UI that's easy to learn and use. Also, the booking engine is cloud-based technology, which means you can access it anytime wherever you are.
The hotel industry must adjust to the new normal post-Covid-19, rise to the challenge, reinvent through tech, and change the game. Request a demo today to convert every visitor into a qualified guest through our secure platform.
AxisRooms Editorial Desk
AxisRooms, a software suite provider for the hospitality industry, is committed to aiding your business growth, not just with our state-of-the-art products and services, but also with the latest updates from the travel and hospitality industry. Got something to say? Write to us at: [email protected]
