Do’s and Don’ts for a Hotel Website

Working at WIHP I come across lot’s of hotel websites both good and bad, there are some points that I find commonly misunderstood by hoteliers and some web designers which make for ineffective hotel websites that don’t sell as much as they could. I started writing this as an article about hotel website design, but as it turns out I’m going to make a list of DO’s and DON’Ts or rather Don’ts and Do’s as I am listing it here. While some of this may go against established viewpoints, I am not writing it as a series of opinions, this is based on over 12 years of trial and error in the highly competitive market that is Paris.

To start with let’s get one thing straight. A Hotel website is there for one purpose and one purpose only – to sell inventory directly for the hotel at highest possible profit to the hotel. What a website isn’t is a medium to flatter a hotelier’s ego, it isn’t there to impress people with fancy animations, it isn’t there to be liked by Google, it isn’t there for any other purpose than to generate maximum bookings at the highest possible profit to the hotel.

Now that we got that straight let’s go over some do’s and don’ts of common points I have noticed together with other professionals at WIHP.

Don’ts

Don’t create a website for Google, Google isn’t going to sleep in your hotel!
It’s a classic we keep running into, some hotelier has been “advised” by a “professional” that the website needs lots of keyword heavy text and lots of information on the home page in order to be well indexed in Google. So they make a horrible website that guests try to avoid. Get this straight – someone who is booking a room in a hotel isn’t interested in a description of the hotel’s history and or something like: “This is really a boutique hotel because it was renovated with a specific boutique hotel design and therefore is getting some of the best reviews as one of the top boutique hotels in the city”. That is making a website for Google rather than for your guests. Sure your SEO guys will complain, but they’ll just need to get better at their jobs.

Don’t focus on animations, it’s distracting.
We all want a sexy website, with fancy animations that look great. We want to show the world that we have the latest technology in the world and we’re up to date, skip it – it’s a distraction! Your guest knows what he wants – even if he is seeing an average of 12 websites before he choses his hotel it isn’t because he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. On the contrary, he just isn’t finding it and your animations are making things worse.

Don’t present the entire city, you’re trying to sell your hotel.
I can’t count how many times I’ve landed on a hotel website only to be searching for the “Rooms” menu option so I could get to see the rooms and find out what the hotel was really like. Some people seem to think the hotel needs to present every single corner of the hotel and then every single corner of the city. Sure it’s great to show your bar but why in the world are you telling him about your Concierge, Shopping, Things to do, Events, Shows etc on your main menu? You aren’t the local tourist information you’re trying to sell him a room. Waste his time and he’ll go somewhere else, like an OTA for example (they understood this long ago).

Don’t go cheap on your booking engine, it’ll cost you the sale.
Unfortunately too many hotels think the Booking Engine is something they can relegate to the cheapest on the market. What would you think of your reservation office telling the potential guests “Hm let’s see I think I can accept your reservation but you’ll have to hold while I check with the manager and my supervisor, after that I’ll run a credit check and you can call back in about 15 minutes” you’d fire the lot of them. That’s what a bad booking engine is doing to you. Pay a little more, get something that’s efficient.

Now that we’ve looked at those points, the contrast will probably seem obvious but let’s go over them.

Do’s

Create a website for users. As I mentioned in my earlier post about USPs you need to present 3 factors in 3 seconds: Location, Comfort and Value. How do you do that? Visuals, large ones, show don’t tell. People want to see the room, see the location, see the rates and that is what will close your guests to come. Use great and large photos, as I mentioned in my post about hotel photography – guests want to see your room, your hotel and what you have to show, if a photo tells a thousand words, then you don’t need to write a lot. If your site is pertinent, Google will show it, so focus on the people. They’re the ones that will sleep in your hotel.

Make your website fast and to the point. As I mentioned just above you have 3 seconds to make the sale. The potential guest knows what he wants, show him your hotel, if you fit his criteria you’ve got the sale. So make your website fast, add some animations if you want but only if it helps the three second rule, the WOW effect of your website should be your hotel not the animations.

Navigation must be simple. Menus need to be simple and easy to navigate. There are essential points of the hotel that need to be shown, such as the rooms, the location and how to book. Sure you can add more but add intelligently because your guest needs to know how to book or where to check your location without being rocket scientists. Remember you’ve got lot’s of competition and they may sell faster than you.

Invest in a good booking engine. The booking engine comes at the most crucial moment of the sale. Now is the time the guest needs to pull out the credit card, all the reasons in the world why he shouldn’t pay are going to creep up. You can either help yourself make the sale with a fast and smooth booking engine or help him find reasons not to pay by having a complicated booking process. Test the booking engine before you sign a contract. How smooth is the booking process, get your parents to try it can they figure it out? Try some people to see if they find it annoying, smooth, easy or if they just leave.

As a hotelier, you have one objective to keep in mind – is it effective? demand from your web-designer that he produce a site which converts and is measurable in increased revenues. Simple analytics can provide you with the information. While we have developed a sophisticated hotel analytics system at WIHP, you can already start measuring by installing e-commerce with Google Analytics. Track your conversions, how many visits create how many bookings etc. compare with your friends that have similar hotels, are you better, worse etc.

This list isn’t everything but I hope it gives enough to make hoteliers think and maybe review their design.

9 Comments

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  seminyak villas March 17, 2011 at 7:07 pm

  interesting article. i like Google isn’t going to sleep in your hotel!, ha..ha ha ha ha ..nice..really like that, but overall , interesting and get new knowledge . thanks again

  Reply
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  Ashvin Jetpuria March 20, 2011 at 12:40 pm

  I could not agree more.
  The pragmatic approach is to let the guest-to-be get about his bookings in the fastest time.
  However most people making decisions on websites for hotels are driven by that desire to animate, photo-slide and mesmerize their visitors into a dizzying state.

  There is a balance to be designed into websites.

  Reply
• How did you hear about us - Hotel Marketing Survey by WIHP | Hotel Marketing Blog - Mirarmedia by Martin Soler May 18, 2011 at 2:41 pm

  [...] down the ranking costing you the double in work. The best strategy for an independent hotel is to build a proper website and get popular through all the regular channels. Additionally I purposely didn’t give the [...]

  Reply
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  mykonos hotel July 4, 2011 at 8:08 am

  Great Article, really makes me think about some changes I need to go ahead and do on our site..

  Reply
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  How to increase hotel occupancy November 18, 2011 at 1:58 pm

  Great post Martin!
  In my research, I found a lot depends on the contact form: color, shape, header, required fields, field titles, lengths, positioning…etc. Seems like simple little tweaks but we found that the just as a poor combination can lead to shallow leads, the right combination can boost inquiries and reservations. Saludos!

  Reply
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  hotel en orlando March 10, 2012 at 4:42 am

  Thanks for providing the information. I really like your blog. Thanks a lot for your posting.

  Reply
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  Juerg Wyss March 31, 2012 at 9:42 pm

  Martin

  While I agree with the other points, I doubt on this one: “Don’t present the entire city, you’re trying to sell your hotel”. I only agree that a hotel should not post this on their main page but they need a section or more to explain more than their hotel only. Why?

  If you want to get direct bookings, you need to be ahead of the OTA’s in “searches”, Google, Bing, whatever. You can’t be ahead of Expedia, Priceline and others with your keywords, if they are limited to “Hotel” and “Paris”. For this you need to go “long tail”, you need to focus on some exclusive topics and present them on your website.

  I think time is over where guests are looking for hotels as a place for room and board only. Let’s make some examples:

  Let’s assume I want to go hiking, I will most probably include the word “Hiking” in my hotel search. I will check if the hotel is writing about this to make sure there are people, staff, who can give me the hints only known to locals. To prove they’re knowledgeable, they need to write about this.

  Let’s assume I plan to spend a weekend in London and I’m interested in shopping. Yes, I can find a lot of websites to find addresses of shops and I can book any hotel. But what is if I find a hotel website where the trainee, a girl interested in fashion shopping, is blogging about the latest special deals in the region? Don’t think I will book this hotel and make sure to meet this girl before going onto my fisrt shopping tour?

  In short, I strongly belive hotels should put more content onto their website than explaning their hotel only. They do have to focus on some topics and show that they are the local sepcialists, the only one who can make sure you get your experience you’re looking for.

  In the last 35 years I spent close to 3000 nights in hotels in 50 different countries. When looking for a hotel, I use “long tail keywords”, describing exactly what I want to do in this place. By booking hotels who show me their experience in what my preferences are, I was never disappointed.

  One more proof: Let’s assume you want to marry in Zurich/Switzerland in a luxury hotel. Now, copy/paste these words into Google: “hochzeit luxus hotel zürich” (Hochzeit is German for wedding”. No OTA appears (except for paid search) and what do you find on position 3? A blog entry I posted for a small test with the above keywords.

  So, for direct bookings you need direct traffic, for this you need long tail keywords and for this you need content on your website (or at least a blog).

  Your thoughts?

  Reply
  • 
    Martin Soler April 1, 2012 at 11:49 am

    Hi Jurg,

    I don’t disagree with your viewpoint on this, the essential point in any strategy is does it work. Meaning are you seeing bookings as a result of this coming from those keywords.

    However there is a point where it’s a question of service to the end user. If that is really the only hotel offering luxury wedding packages then it’s a service to the user. If there are in fact many others and but a marketing agency is artificially optimizing the site to be the only ones on the list then it’s not really going to help the end user and is arguably what is called webspam.

    But as you point out, create a blog for these additional points that you can attach to the hotel’s site. If the hotel has the resource to keep that blog fresh and interesting then it’s a great service to the end user. Blogs are a great way to add interesting content without spamming the web (providing the articles are helpful) and without upsetting the sales funnel on the site.

    Remember that the blog needs to feed the site and not vice versa.

    As we went over on twitter, yes there is definitely a point of long tail search, but due to webspam more and more users tend to know that if you’re searching for a product that is sold and you just type a search for that product they are very likely to find spammy results. Very much so in the hotel industry, and thus OTAs, Meta Search, Blog articles reviewing lists of hotels etc tend to be a better source for information.

    Those are my thoughts and experience on the matter.

    Reply
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  Juerg Wyss April 1, 2012 at 9:42 pm

  Now we’re closer
  As a hotelier I would do everything to increase my direct sales rather than paying high commissions to OTAs (No misunderstanding, they do have their advantages but also disadvantages for the consumer and hotelier).
  So, I need a way to appear on the top of Google search, ahead of the OTAs. By explaning who I am, what I am, how it is to stay with me and to explain what soft value the customer will get, I’m producing a lot of content (and keywords) and I will achieve my target. But as you say, it has to be true, accurate, helpful (I would like to add: personal), otherwise it’s spam.

  Let’s see if we find some other posts to be discussed to bring some traffic to your blog.

  Reply