Hoteliers that are trying to get more guests to their property face the challenge of a crowded marketplace and lots of competition. For many hoteliers, online travel agents (OTAs) are getting more from the business than they are. In order to put yourself in the limelight and break the chain of middlemen, you need a website or an upgrade to the existing website you have.
Your hotel website is one of the proven ways to attract guests to your business. For every website, there are a number of guests that visit it, but it is the content of your website that decides if the guest will finally patronize your business or not.
There are two proven ways to go about building a hotel website that attracts guests; either you use the service of a website designer, or you build the website yourself (DIY).
Collaborating with a website designer
For every standard website you build for your business then you attract multiple guests to your business through the professionalism your website displays. Seeking the help of a website designer for your hotel website remains the best decision even though it might attract a few more bucks.
You can’t go wrong with a professional website designer whose work will speak quality and also attract the desired number of guests for business. From the beautiful colors to the eloquent displays of characters and stylish layout, they have it all. They are called professional website designers for a reason, right?
Talking of professionalism, it means they’ve got it all covered; they also help by collaborating with another freelancer to help with the content, blog posts, and right keywords to make your hotel website rank high, so it appears on the front page; that way, potential guests can easily book a room on your hotel website.
Do-it-yourself (DIY)
Even though hiring a website designer remains one of the best ways to build your website, you can’t go wrong with building your hotel website yourself either. This will save time since you will know the number of days it will take in coming up with a stunning design, and most importantly, it saves cost.
With the free courses on the internet, building your hotel website has just been made easier. There are so many platforms that offer ready-made website templates, and you can choose freely from them; just make sure to choose the one specifically made for the hotel to make the work easy.
While designing yourself, you need to pay attention to details in order to make your website stand out and attractive to potential guests. How do you go about this?
- Responsive design
The probability that you’re reading this article on your mobile is very high. This shows that most people use mobile devices more. Many book hotels on their mobile rather than on computers as well. Building your hotel website in a good format, which makes it responsive to all screen sizes, is the best.
- Great photography
The importance of high-definition pictures in a hotel website cannot be overemphasized. The pictures represent an image of your business, and it has to speak of quality. The pictures of your facilities, lobby, rooms, spa, dining room, gym, swimming pool, and the front of the hotel should be on your website to capture the guest’s attention.
The pictures might be too much on your website, so it might slow down the speed while loading; this is a big turn-off for most guests. To avoid this, limit the number of plugins and page redirects on the website. Also, save the HD pictures in png formats.
Ask your previous guests to leave genuine feedback on the space you must have provided on the website to make potential guests see how important you treat your customers.
- Direct booking engine
Of what use is a hotel website without a direct booking engine? The goal is to attract guests who will later book a space, right? So, on your website, make your ‘book now’ button stand out and be visible to all guests.
Don’t forget to include your contacts for those willing to make more inquiries and those willing to make reservations for meetings, conferences, etc.
- Website translation
The economy is going global and so should your website. The potential market means that the playing field has been leveled up for small and big businesses. In order to reach global customers, you should eliminate the language barrier on your website. This can simply be done with the help of professional translation services by companies or translators that can make your content multilanguage.
- SEO functionality
Irrespective of the website builder you will be using to build your website, some SEO components need to be built-in to make rank high. When you build with WordPress, you can consider Yoast as your SEO savior.
Conclusion
One very way hoteliers are losing to OTAs is through consistent branding. Sites like booking.com and Expedia have established their brand in the sand of time. You should also maintain a consistent branding of your hotel business; I wouldn’t trust my credit card on a random website like myawesomehotel.com too.
Also, try updating your website with the COVID-19 information page. Is this necessary, you ask? Yes! It is. With the new variant in town and the continuous spread of the deadly virus, creating a page on your website that makes your safety guidelines known to your guests is a welcome idea. This way, guests know the dos and don’ts of your hotel.
Alan Ridgell
Further details:
If interested in learning more, you can contact the author via email at alannridgell@gmail.com.
