For any hotel that wants to appeal to today’s consumers, having an Internet presence is crucial. The likelihood of drawing visitors from all around the world has increased in the digital age, after all. Additionally, the web platform is the most efficient way for tourists to find your hotel.
Like with many leading names in the hospitality industry, the core of your hotel brand’s online presence is your website. Guests may visit your website before visiting your social media profiles or YouTube channel. The fact is that the ideal location to turn leads into clients is on your website.
Given this, you want a website that can encourage visitors to stay on longer to achieve their goals. One surefire approach to do this is launching an attractive and helpful website. When your website is functioning effectively, you can even begin considering ways to increase your YouTube views or your social media followers, too.
Here are our thoughts on why having a website is important in the hospitality industry.
Why Does a Hotel Need a Website?
A website is necessary for every business. You miss out on fantastic opportunities if your business doesn’t build one. You can utilise the website to implement a variety of marketing methods that will aid in the expansion of your business. However, building websites on DIY platforms limit the hotel’s online presence because options for personalisation often sit behind a paywall. Every hotel requiring a unique website has to look elsewhere if it aims for total customisation.
Instead of adopting the template used by thousands of other brand sites, aim to have your hotel’s website reflect your brand’s unique message. A custom website allows you to include more factual content and design to demonstrate what distinguishes your hotel from the local competition.
Building a website also means you can include external links to relevant websites, greatly boosting your SEO efforts. In line with this, the hotel’s official brand site can be optimised to rank for many additional keywords.
An added bonus when you build and run your own website is that you need not wait to update prices or make announcements. Your staff will have exclusive control over the information published on your very own platform.
Spas, gift shops, fitness facilities, and golf courses are just a few of the amenities that hotels provide. With a brand website up and running, you can pay greater attention to these valuable in-house services. Yes, putting up dedicated pages that are exclusively devoted to these features help increase business interest.
Google Analytics may be used to monitor the sources of traffic on your website as well. Not only that but by integrating social media with your platform, you can increase overall traffic to your social media channels and let more people follow your hotel for exclusive deals and special events. Additionally, social media can support your current SEO campaign, giving it a two-way advantage.
Business Advantages From a Hotel Website
Today, almost everything can be purchased online, including meals, clothing, and footwear. People desire the ability to complete tasks quickly, easily, and comfortably. What more effective approach is there to provide them with this than creating a website that allows them to book a room in your hotel? Indeed, it seems foolish not to have a website today, given how important and advantageous they are to hotels. Hotels running their own websites typically make more money than those without. It is so since most users make their final evaluation of a hotel on their website. It shows how much a website can do to help your accommodation business thrive.
The following are the major benefits of having a hotel website:
Creates a Good First Impression
In any situation, making a good first impression is essential. However, when customers check into a hotel, that’s not when the initial impression occurs. People interested in staying at your hotel will first look up your website. That is where people form their first impression of your business.
Your website ought to ideally reflect your company. Visitors can connect a messy, disorganised, or visually unappealing website to your actual hotel. If it takes them ten minutes to book a room, it’s likely that they’ll think your hotel services are equally slow. To give a good impression of your hotel, you must ensure that the colours, photos, fonts, and other design components work well together.
Brand Awareness
One of the most crucial tasks in the hotel industry is developing a strong brand identity because it can boost revenue and bookings. If the public hears about your hotel’s brand more than three times, you can be confident that people will remember you better.
On that note, make sure the first result on a Google search for your hotel is your official hotel website. Developing your brand image by having a custom professional website is an effective way to boost your company visibility.
Source of Information
Most guests will typically visit a hotel’s website at least once to look around and learn about the amenities offered, the room pricing, the hotel’s concept, and other pertinent information.
A hotel may use its website as a channel for disseminating news and updates like announcements, promotions, and events. This often makes for good content to plug to your social media profiles.
Finding out more about your hotel is the main motivation for many website visitors. The likelihood of them bouncing is great if they discover that they can’t get what they want to know or do on your platform immediately. Nobody wants to spend too much time searching for your contact information or content through a cluttered website.
Of course, you want customers to find what they’re looking for easily. A user-friendly structure and readable fonts is how you make it easier for site visitors to access information they seek on your portal.
Increases Direct Bookings and Sales
One of the challenges for hotels today is increasing direct sales amidst various economical and logistical constraints. In light of this, a hotel website helps you better hit sales goals.
A professional hotel website should include online booking and confirmation functions. Beyond having a contact form, it is better for your website to have an online reservation system installed. People can easily check for hotel availability, compare rates, and secure bookings with payment when you have an effective online reservation system in place.
More Revenue, Less Expense
Hotel reservations, customer loyalty, and return on investment increases with a good website that is optimised for search engines.
Additionally, having a constant web presence saves staff time through automated Internet operations, including filling out forms for proposals, receiving basic guest information, and reserving meeting venues.
Furthermore, it allows your staff to obtain your guest’s contact information, which should enable you to create a target list for sending out promotions (e.g. blogs, newsletters, etc.), building membership for an online community, and pursuing a slew of other marketing initiatives.
Competitive Edge
Your hotel is up against fierce competition since new hotels are popping up everywhere. With so many options to choose from, you can easily lose customers from a single, minor mistake.
Settling with a pedestrian, lacklustre website design can be enough to convince visitors to leave your hotel website and book your rival’s. Prevent this by ensuring your website has a good design and content that can keep visitors around longer. A strong website design also gives you an advantage over competing hotels that have not yet implemented one.
Develop Strong Relationship With Guests
Hotel managers can quickly connect, maintain personal contact, and build relationships with potential and returning guests through a hotel website.
For instance, they may upload new images or update website content to attract potential new customers. A more advanced content management system makes it possible for them to upload media content and utilise multilingual functions for digital correspondence or page content, too. This makes it incredibly simple and affordable for any hotelier to translate promotions into the specific languages for geographically targeted markets.
Great Online Marketing Tool
Do you realise that you can gain a deeper understanding of your clientele by using Google Analytics on your hotel website?
Google Analytics is a useful tool when it comes to online statistics. It can reveal your visitors’ geographic location, the websites they browse, or even how long they spend on your hotel website. With this knowledge, you can utilise Google Ads to target your audience better and ensure that the money you spent on ads will pay for themselves. You can even know about your client’s preferred brand persona.
Helps Establish Trust
Today’s consumers adapt to the times. Guests staying at your hotel will want to see modern designs and functionality. By carefully examining your website, you can figure out whether your brand is moving forward or if it remains rooted in the past. Remember, you’re not going to win over new guests if your website has a poor design, outdated content (and promotions), and has little functionality besides a contact form.
In other words, a functional, updated, and well-designed website can help you establish brand trust and credibility.
Final Thoughts
Time flies and Internet technology is currently advancing quickly. If a hotel believes it can run its business without a hotel website, it may be in for a nasty surprise. While they logically can manage the business without one, they may have fewer opportunities for sales and revenue compared to a hotel that has invested in a professional hotel website.
Digital Rescue runs a tight ship of professionals that specialise in hotel website design who have the skill to develop your own custom hotel website. Together with our sister company, TopRankings, one of the leading SEO agencies in Australia, let’s position your brand for unlimited growth and lead generation. Contact us for a free chemistry call today.
