Undervalued and unloved, the brand websites of many hotel companies need more than a bit of care and attention. With travel finally taking off, what should hoteliers focus on to improve their direct websites in order to ensure they receive their fair share of online bookings?
The website itself is part, admittedly a critical part, of the entire digital marketing ecosystem. Think of an iceberg: there is the small visible part that we see (the website) and the larger submerged portion that is invisible to us (back end coding, links, SEO, digital media, etc.). Update the website without integrating all of the components associated with driving business? A good idea, certainly, but not enough by itself to drive online bookings. In the famous movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner said, ".. if you build it, he will come." He was referring, of course, to a baseball field in Iowa, clearly not websites! Well, that may work in the movies, but not in the fast-paced world of hospitality marketing.
I firmly believe the hotel website is the most underutilized and quite often forgotten hotel asset. Your hotel website - for a single property or multi property brand - allows you to balance your distribution mix so that your property is the least susceptible to seasonality, group cancellations and calamities, or over dependence on the OTAs or any single distribution channel.
So what are these features and functionalities that enable the hotel website to generate maximum revenue?
Hoteliers must understand that the hotel website is 50% art and 50% science.
Many hoteliers are obsessed with how beautiful their website is, completely ignoring the website UX, technology, functionality and content. Only a website conceptualized and developed using equal parts art and science can engage and convert users and generate meaningful revenues.
The 50% Art Part:
The art part includes: beautiful mobile-first design, mobile-first editorial-level written content, beautiful imagery, videos and virtual tours, and in the future - metaverse storefronts and property tours.
The 50% Technology Part:
Your property's mobile-first website must be backed by a mobile-first website technology platform (CMS), which features mobile-first functionalities specific to the hoteliers' needs, such as comprehensive merchandising technology suite, reservation abandonment tools, personalization engine for pricing and content, robust on-page and technical SEO, cloud hosting, and robust analytics suite.
The answer first, then the rational. Get out of your own way. It's hard as an individual and near impossible as an organization, but if it is kept in the daily dialog of activities and decisions, it can creep into the results of your actions.
We have allowed ourselves to hold on too long to the mantra of old marketing, that we are somehow still in control of what is said, how it is perceived, and how we want it valued. Truth be told we have been wasting our time building websites based on the age-old adage 'build it and they will come'. We focused on the belief that if we are good enough with our interpretation of what we want them to see, and inevitably purchase, we can mitigate the narrative.
The reality is, while we have been focusing on this outdated strategy, other industries figured out it's better to follow the consumer and offer what they are wanting in the dialog of how they wish to understand what we have to offer. Rather than gathering all of the content we think is interesting, (especially what we want to sell) and attempting to distract the potential guest from other things we don't sell, we have isolated ourselves from holding true to our 'spirit of hospitality'.
We must align ourselves into the stream of the decision, not its controller. No, we cannot become the authority in all things content wise for our given markets. To be honest we even struggle with being the authority of our own identity. There are simply too many 'ahead' of us, the biggest of which is the very source that dominates our discovery online, Google. I have always believed that not every leader is at the very apex, there are many ways to be a leader without being the most dominant.
How does all this relate to direct booking? NASCAR. Yup, the car race. The complexity of the analogy aside, following others (drafting), is a winning strategy, Letting others spend their fuel to stay ahead, work with others who also want to win but whom you use to keep in position, to be ready to be in the right place at the right moment. Yup, It isn't who leads the race for all 499.9 laps of a 500 lap race, it's the one that is at the right spot at the right moment that wins.
To do that you have to be relevant, but you don't have to always be dominant. Be more concerned about your value to the guest, not there's to you. Collaborate with your competition, in all forms, sometimes they 'win', but if played right they can help you win.
As our expertise is the online presence of branded hotels, I can agree they need more care and attention. Content seems to be written at opening, then never touched again.
Content should be reviewed regularly, especially with the changing of the target markets, to highlight the right demand generators and clearly identify your value proposition against the competitive set.
Strong imagery, of course, is paramount. But, extra attention should be paid to the first header image of each page as well as your thumbnail image on each brand.com search. Room images, and order of room images, need to be carefully determined to ensure you are also upselling rooms when there is an opportunity.
After the basics of content and imagery are maximized, it is time to ensure there is a consistent story across all platforms. Ensure your amenities are accurate on your own site, as well as third party sites. Focus on removing old images from Google My Business, Expedia, Booking.com and TripAdvisor to start.
Lastly, if you are a franchisee, ensure you are taking advantage of all brand channels. Each CMS is different so understand your competitive set is also other hotels in the same brand and you need to opt in to brand specific programs.
There is no question that your website should represent your hotel fairly and reflect the 21st century. Pictures to be up to date, description, etc. Nothing has changed these fundamentals over the last decade. Sure, we have gotten more advanced with plugins, what we can track and what we cannot and generally feature capabilities. But the basics still are as valid today as they were 10 years ago. We need to be careful though not to promise hoteliers the world and not deliver on it.
Consumers buy through OTA's and one reason besides them spending millions on marketing is the simple fact that they satisfy a one too many relationship vs a website only satisfying a one on one relationship. Imagine you have to go to town, a town you haven't been, a town that you have no idea about except that you have to go and meet someone at a location. How are you going to book? Look at each hotels website? No, you look at an OTA and then go from there....and then "go from there" is a BIG question mark.
Nevertheless, just like when you go on your first date and check yourself out in front of the mirror before leaving....your website is the same, its the first date your customer will ever have. And we know about the power of first impressions. So be authentic, be you, get some good quality pics taken (yes, you will pay a price for those but you will use them 24-7-365 so the cost over 2 years is pennies a day), read your descriptions and give them a reason to choose you.
Let's get the obvious out of the way: Driving direct bookings takes work. Booking.com and Expedia spend billions of dollars each year to pull guests away from your site—and then charge you 15%-25% for the privilege of providing you with reservations from those same people. You're not going to win your fair share simply by launching a new website or switching booking engines. It's not that those aren't important; it's that, on their own, they're not enough.
Driving direct bookings starts with making a commitment to attracting and retaining guests. You won't win by trying to capture just one booking; you'll win by building a brand. What differentiates you from the other options in your market? What makes you the right choice for each guest's stay? Does the content on your website reflect that? Do you consistently talk about the events and attractions in your market? Do your rates and packages feature value adds and benefits that matter to your target guests? Do you encourage guests to opt in and receive emails and social media messages that highlight offers and events that they'll truly care about? Do you execute marketing campaigns in social and email and display and search that speak to your guests and their interests?
Or are you simply shouting, “Book now. Book Now! BOOK NOW!!!”—and hoping you'll outperform a company with “booking” in their name?
Independent hotels and brands that succeed at driving direct revenue understand that finding and attracting and converting guests isn't a one-time proposition. It's a process. I can say with certainty that hotels that invest in these actions see higher rates, greater occupancy, improved loyalty, lower share of OTA business, and lower cost of guest acquisition overall. If you're not getting enough direct business, it's probably not just your website that needs care and attention. It's your direct revenue strategy.
There are many aspects to consider when it comes to driving direct bookings to your hotel website, starting with proper SEO work and ensuring your site ranks well for popular keywords used my your target audience. But perhaps the simplest thing, yet still under-used, is to TELL the consumer why he or she should book direct on your website:
Assuming all the above is in place - and that's a big assumption, in my experience - then it's mostly about playing the content marketing game along with strategic advertising with Google Hotel Ads and on relevant social media depending on your target audience demographics.
Speaking of content marketing... does your hotel provide any packages? While these are not always the best selling items, they do offer ideas for potential clients who may do their "own" package, yet still reside at your property. So combining room rates with activities (cinema, massage, city guided tour, flowers, tickets to art exhibit or music festival, etc.) is a great way to position your hotel as more than just "a place to sleep", in the heart of the action or whatever your strategic positioning may be.
One last thing: does your website have a subscription box to your newsletter? Do you give information about that newsletter, i.e. what's in it for me, how often do you send it? Getting customer data should be a priority at every customer touchpoint, and it often starts with your website!
People visit websites because they either want to know something or do something. Thus immediately providing them with the killer snippet of information or piece of functionality that they are seeking is key to success.
However, looking at most hotel websites, we seem more concerned with presenting people with pretty pictures than addressing their highly specific content needs. Refocusing on what our customers want to do, allowing them to get in and out as quickly and efficiently as possible, is undoubtedly the key to brand.com website success.
First and foremost, let me start off by suggesting a website that is secured and easy to navigate. Travelers need to find what they are looking for in one search. Then, they can pick and book the hotels that fit their travel purposes within just a few clicks.
Then, an attractive web design with appealing visual aids/content and high loading speed can help lower the bounce rate. A popup message on the exit page and re-marketing can help engage or remind those who have not completed a booking after a search.
Lastly, hotels must strategically use SEO and SEM keywords to describe their products and service offerings. Likewise, all pictures and videos used on the website must also be attached with a vivid description with “rich” SEO and SEM keywords.
Hotel websites are a potential goldmine when you apply hotel revenue strategies with digital marketing techniques.
Another way to look at this opportunity is to consider a hotel's revenue strategy with or without any RMS technology. Or with or without an experienced hotel revenue manager. Every hotel has a strategy when it comes to revenue. It might be highly sophisticated or it might be quite basic - but at least there's some form of a strategy.
However, what happens when a potential guest visits the hotel website? In most cases, there is absolutely zero revenue strategy applied at the hotel website level. Most guests who visit your hotel website don't actually make a booking, so that's a really big missed opportunity.
It's only "IF" the potential guest enters the hotel booking engine that they start to understand the hotel's value, pricing and can potentially be influenced by the hotel's revenue strategy.
If your metrics are aligned with ours, you will realise that 4 out of 5 hotel website visitors leave the site without making a booking. So this is an important piece of website traffic that needs to be engaged, influenced and inspired by your hotel revenue strategy - what's holding you back?
It's no mystery that Peter and I have completely different views on the subject.
I may go against the grain, but I think I've already expressed my opinion on another viewpoint.
Moreover, let's be honest: websites are nothing but glorified versions of pdf files. Nothing really changed since August 6, 1991.
We talk a lot about (hyper)personalization, yet, when I visit whateverhotel.com, I have the same exact experience Peter has, and the same experience other 7.753 billion people in the world have. Companies such as Bookmark and The Grid are trying to change this paradigm with the help of AI, but -right now- websites are just that: online static brochures.
I've moved clients from overpriced proprietary CMS websites to 25€ WordPress themes, and nothing changed in terms of conversion. In a few cases, it also increased.
It's 2022, and consumers prefer to engage and interact with apps, superapps, social networks, messenger apps, emails, business profiles/listings, Google Travel, or simply directly with the SERP, much more than they do with brand websites.
I agree with Danny Flamberg when he says that "websites are no longer a sole or even principal destination."
So, not only I do not think hoteliers should focus on improving their direct websites, but I think we're basically beating a dead horse here...