The starting point for reducing your reliance on expensive OTAs is your own hotel website. In order for your efforts to grow direct bookings to be successful, you must have a truly world class hotel website. Our team of hotel website designers has the experience to deliver a hotel website that converts users into visitors. Below are some things to keep in mind when building your hotel website.
Go to the websites of the world's leading hotels. Open your website in a separate tab. Flick back and forth between the two. In order to be successful, you must benchmark your hotel website against the best in the world.
Potential guests want to know exactly what your hotel has to offer so as many high quality images as possible of all areas of the hotel need to be on the site. This will help to drive reservations. If possible, letting prospective guests "walk around" by using 360 degree tour functionality online is a proven way to increase conversion rates.
Users want to see what your hotel looks like, what facilities it has, what they can expect on arrival. You can never have too many images and ideally video of your hotel. Budget permitting a 360 degree tour is perfect.
Clunky booking engines will cost you reservations. Test your booking engine and if the checkout process isn't smooth, you need to look for an alternate provider.
Your team is a key part of your offering. Let users "meet" your team with a well populated meet the team page. Knowing they can expect a warm and professional welcome will entice visitors to book with you.
Put users at ease that they will not regret their decision to stay with you. The more credibility builders that you can draw upon, the better. Having an up to date blog also helps to build credibility but be careful a blog with a latest post from a year ago serves the opposite purpose.
Ensure that users know that they will not beat the price on your website on any other website i.e. there is no need to shop around!
