Competition in the hotel industry is fierce, and it's about to become more competitive as close to 3000 more hotels are expected to open across the globe in 2023. Your property may possess all the qualities that make it an exceptional stay, but essentially it's the type of content you create on your website that will help your property stand out from the crowd and attract new guests.
An estimated 700 million guests will book their hotel rooms online this year. Hence, it is essential to produce purposeful content that adds value to stand out from the rest and attract those new customers to your property.
In this article, we will help you with practical tips to optimise your website content so that you can drive traffic to your website and convert those potential guests into bookers.
5 Optimisation Techniques for Hotel Websites
The website
The website is the first place guests look for information about the hotel. If your website design is lacking, it is an instant turnoff for hotel bookers. If your website is also not clean and appealing, why would your physical location be?
That's why you need to make your website beautiful and usable. That means it's simple and straightforward for users (on any device) to find the information they need to complete a reservation.
The website's beautiful design and navigational elements, including calls to action, must also meet the website's loading speed to enhance the user's experience. Always keep the language clear and simple, and ensure the booking process is easy to avoid mid-booking abandonment.
Double-check for typos or grammatical mistakes, and always translate your content into various languages to attract more markets. The RoomRaccoon booking engine allows your guests to book in multiple languages. This way your clients are able to book and enjoy a booking experience that’s in a language they understand and are more comfortable with.
If you don’t want to hire a designer to design your website but need help creating the perfect hotel website, you can use the RoomRaccoon Website Builder. A fully visual page builder with beautiful, functional pre-built templates to give visitors even more reason to stay at your property.
You can also track your website's conversion rate in the system by adding tracking codes to track the behaviour of your website visitors through Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel.
Use quality pictures
It is crucial to have professional and high-quality images on your website to captivate and leave a lasting impression on your website users. Guests base much of their decision to stay with you on the quality and quantity of the photos you present. They will not choose your property if your imagery isn't of similar or better quality to your competition.
Ensure that you upload at least four pictures per room category to give prospective guests a view of what your rooms look like. Make sure that there are at least 20 pictures available on your website. This is the minimum requirement on most booking channels like Booking.com.
You can easily upload high quality images of your rooms on RoomRaccoon. Your pictures will be used in the image slider of your Booking Engine, which is linked to your website. The RoomRaccoon PMS will resize your images automatically, ensuring that your rooms look great on any device.
Be easily searchable online!
Today’s tourists are empowered to do comparative research without leaving their beds. So if your property isn’t easily accessible online, you will not receive many bookings. You need to be available on all the relevant platforms so people can find you when they need to secure a place to stay. Don’t confine yourself to just one social platform, search engine, or travel website.
In our social and digitally driven environment, Instagram is one of the most effective social media platforms available to hotel owners, boasting more than one billion users. They’re not only free, but they’re continuously improving their platform to keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape, and their Action Buttons will significantly help increase your content engagement. If you want to utilise this platform effectively, download our Instagram guide to level up your hotel's Instagram strategy. This guide shares exciting Instagram post ideas for hotels to maintain a consistent posting schedule in 2023.
Last but not least, stay on top of your SEO. 75% of travellers also start using a search engine to find places to stay. Use popular hotel keywords in your site copy, and make sure your site loads super fast.
Don’t just market the hotel, market the location
Chances are, many future travellers still need to decide whether or not the city or town where your hotel is located is where they want to use their precious paid time off.
This is why you shouldn’t just be focusing on the amenities your hotel has to offer. While promoting your top-rated room service and the infinity pool is wise, promoting your location is just as essential. What makes your city or town a desirable place to visit?
Future visitors want to know this. So recommend nearby restaurants, bars, and unique attractions close to you. Mention activities or tours. Offer tips on how travellers can save money and the best times to visit (insight from a local’s perspective.)
Build trust with guest reviews
Online reviews are an extremely important part of any hotel business. It's the first thing someone sees when they search your hotel name, after all. They'll help increase traffic and bookings and make guests feel more confident about their decision to stay at your establishment.
So encourage guests to review you on Google, Tripadvisor, Booking.com, etc. You can also manage guest reviews from the system instead of logging into Booking.com. Ask guests for testimonials that you can publish on your website because testimonials are one of the most critical pieces of copy you can put on your site. They give potential guests the final push to stay with you.
Update your content regularly
A website that isn’t updated frequently can turn clients off before they know who you are. If your website looks or feels outdated, your prospects will turn away and not look back. It will start to sink in search engine rankings, be less appealing to customers, and worse – no longer be a valuable resource.
Therefore it is important to update your website regularly to improve your overall ranking on google and your visibility online. This will increase your brand exposure, boost your SEO, give returning customers something new, keep your content fresh, improve loading speed, and generate greater sales opportunities for your business.
If you want to optimise your website, RoomRaccoon allows you to set up an analytics account for your website to provide insights and data that can be used to create a better user experience for visitors.
Conclusion
We don't just call our system the all-in-one Hotel Management System because it sounds good. Our system is genuinely designed to provide you with all the appropriate tools to position your property for success. We have a website builder that integrates with your Booking Engine to help you design the perfect hotel website. We equip you with quality content ideas in our Help Centre to help retain visitors and rank highly on search engines. Our PMS automatically resizes your images to ensure that your rooms look great on any device, and our booking engine allows your guests to book in multiple languages so they can enjoy a booking experience in the language they prefer.
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