It's a digital world, and most people’s first impression of a hotel comes online, either through an Online Travel Agency, or directly from a hotel’s own website. OTAs don’t really allow the uniqueness of hotels to shine through, because they squeeze everything into a standard format, however the best hotel website design engages guests from their first contact, immerses them in your offering, and then guides them towards booking directly with you. Hotel website design is one of the most essential elements in promoting lasting success in the highly competitive contemporary hospitality market. In this article we’ll take a look at how to create an exceptional hotel website that attracts visitors and encourages them to make a reservation.
Why is it essential to have your own hotel website
- A hotel’s own website is able to convey more information in greater detail than third party sites, allowing a deeper dive into the hotel and events there
- The more unique a hotel website looks, the more likely it is to attract guests instead of the ‘same old same old’ generic presentation of the competition
- When a booking engine is integrated with the hotel’s website there is less reason for a potential guest to return to an OTA, which means the hotel skips commission payments and decreases its OTA dependency
- Promos and special limited offers can be trailed on the hotel’s own website, adding further reasons for guests to engage
- A good hotel website promotes interaction with guests and builds trust, encouraging future guests to book
Tips for creating a great hotel website
When creating the website, it is essential to know your target audience because the right content engages guests from the get-go. Someone searching for a hotel is looking for an experience. They want to experience luxury, or lots of wellness facilities, or even just convenience. The content of your website should tell them what their guest journey will be, in images and words. So define who you most want to appeal to, such as millennials, business travellers, or retirees and create your whole website with that in mind.
1. Choosing the right domain for your hotel
Getting the name right for the hotel website is of course important, and is sometimes a little tricky if there are already other hotels with similar names. Imagine how a potential guest might be searching for your hotel - think of the keywords which will attract them, and show up in web searches, also carefully choosing your domain name and top-level extension (such as .com, .co, .us).
2. High-quality images to catch attention
We engage with the digital world through images, almost instantly making decisions about whether or not a subject interests us. Research from 2014 found that we can evaluate an image in as little as 13 milliseconds, deciding whether to continue engagement by reading a few words about the subject, or scrolling on. Images of a hotel are the first impression that potential guests get, so those images better be powerful, clear and enticing:
- Images should be high quality and show the beauty of the hotel, and the surrounding environment
- It’s important that images are the right size to optimise speed of loading, so between 1500 and 2500px wide for main images, and around 800px wide for smaller images works best
- Show what your potential clients will most want to see based on your knowledge of your key demographic
- Include images that differentiate your hotel from the competition and show what is unique about your offering
- Your logo and branding, graphic headers and titles must be ‘clean’ so that the viewer is assured about staying on your website
3. Giving rich info about the hotel and its surroundings
Stunning images will encourage people browsing your website to stay a little longer, at which point they will start scanning through what you say about your hotel. Your text should be as attention-grabbing and ‘punchy’ as the images:
- Get straight to the point and prioritise what makes your hotel special and different to the competition
- Know what your brand is, what you stand for, and what your reputation is built on, then emphasise this throughout the text
- Use simple, direct and concise language and satisfy the needs of guests to know more about your location, special events and upcoming seasonal activities
- Have your website available in at least one other guest-appropriate language on an easily-found language button
- Use Calls-To-Action in your text inviting potential guests to come and try facilities, special events and offers, and to make a booking directly with you
The key is to keep someone engaged with your website, and not have them click on to another hotel, or flip back to an OTA site. Everything about your website should encourage viewers to become engaged from the start, get immersed in what you have to offer, then commit to a booking.
4. Having a Booking engine for direct reservations
Having a booking engine inbuilt to your website creates a massive advantage in turning site visitors into guests. Fortunately there are now many modern Property Management Systems (PMS) like the SabeeApp fully integrated cloud-based platform which offers highly effective front and back office functions for hotels, and seamless interfaces for guests. With SabeeApp’s Booking Engine, the hotel website becomes a high-performing sales channel that encourages guests to stop shopping around, and commit to your hotel. And even if they have arrived at your website by way of an Online Travel Agent, having your own booking engine means they don’t need to return to the OTA.
A website-based booking engine is convenient for guests to use, and highly cost effective for the hotel. A smoothly functioning booking engine enhances hotel performance and boosts the bottom line.
5. Reaching guests with the help of SEO
Reaching out to potential guests using excellent images, attractive design, and exciting copywriting is essential, but helping guests find you in the first place involves the art and science of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Google remains the predominant market leader for over 80% of all searches, so satisfying the needs of the company’s ‘web crawler’ bots that collate information is vital in optimising searches for your hotel.
Let’s say you simply listed your property as ‘hotel’. That’s not going to leap to the top of the search rankings, as many other properties will include the same description. So for search engines to find meaningful information, you have to supply it! That means describing your hotel as clearly and as interestingly as possible. This in turn means knowing your audience and what they are looking for. ‘Quiet boutique country hotel for walking getaways’ is clearly a different proposition to ‘City centre hotel close to all amenities and lively nightlife’. So find the words which will gain high SEO scores for your demographic, using an SEO checker to validate your descriptions. There are many sites available to check your copy - both free, and paid.
6. FAQ section to save time and enhance usability
If guests need specific information, let them find it in an accurate and up to date FAQ section. FAQs are important to answer guest queries such as How far is it to the beach? Is there onsite parking? The hotel website is the perfect place to get answers, which would otherwise tie up your staff in answering FAQ calls.
Knowing what to put into the FAQs section should be based on previous experience of guest questions. Reception staff usually have a good idea of the topics which come up most often. With a list of FAQs and answers it’s easy to deploy a multilingual chatbot to the website which can engage guests 24/7. Being able to communicate with a guest in the language of their choosing is a great advantage, and a chatbot can guide them all the way to making a booking.
7. Involving guests with a personalised experience
As people browsing become more engaged with your website, you can progressively show them more, with time sensitive special offers, news of upcoming events, themed weekends and indeed anything that makes your hotel stand out from the competition. The more you can create a dialogue with guests, the better, and a smoothly operating PMS gives the feeling of personalisation while actually making most interactions automatic. You can harvest a wealth of data from guests, which they themselves enter into your system. Not only can you know who has booked and when, but very often why. It could be an anniversary that you can congratulate guests on. Special dietary or health requirements can also show how responsive the hotel is to guests.
8. Collecting guest reviews
Your potential guests will surely look at your hotel’s reviews before proceeding with the booking. Everyone does this - either on OTAs or your own website. Therefore, it’s crucial to collect and manage guest feedback on your website too.
Moreover, collecting guest reviews is not only important for other guests, but also for you the owner of an establishment. With the help of reviews you can discovers flaws in the guest journey, and you can improve your overall service.
There are many strategies to collect guest reviews, let’s see some of them:
- Collecting reviews within your PMS system. With the SabeeApp Guest Advisor, you can send review requests as soon as the guests checked-in to your hotel. As this is very early in the guest journey, you still have plenty of time to fix the issues and make your guest’s stay unforgettable.
- Use incentives, for example, offer a certain % off of the next stay in exchange for a review. You can also offer gift cards, coffe coupons, or anything you’d like.
- You can also ask for a more in-depth survey post-stay via email, where you go into details. This would be a longer survey, but definitely more valuable for your business. Based on this survey you can also create a review for your website.
You can be as creative with the review collection as you’d like to be. One thing is very important: review management does not stop with collecting. You’ll also have to address these reviews. Not all of them will be entirely positive, and you need to reply to these on a timely manner, in a constructive way.
9. Social media: creating and maintaining a great relationship
The power of social media is undeniable, making it essential for hotels to maintain a strong presence across multiple platforms. Depending on your target audience, you might consider having a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even TikTok account. By understanding your ideal guest, you can easily choose the most effective platform to engage with them, shere updates and provide valuable content about your hotel. While social media does not replace a well-designed website, it can be a great addition to your online presence. The more engaging content you post, the higher your chances of attracting potential guests.
Additionally, social media can play a key role in your branding. as it allows your guests to create authentic posts about your hotel, boosting your visibility without requiring you to constantly generate content. We recommend encouraging guests to use your unique hashtags and tag your property during their stay. In return, you can offer some discounts or extra service such as free breakfast or a signature cocktail.
Be professional with the best hotel website design
Designing a website is a creative activity which requires a high degree of content knowledge and appliance of the science of SEO. Photography, copywriting and initiation of a website should be put in the hands of professionals, but with a very clear brief from the hotelier and staff. Likewise upgrades and refreshes of the hotel website should be rigorously overseen.
The best hotel website design is your shop window to the world, coupled with channels for guests to book directly. Achieving effective hotel website design is therefore one of the most important responsibilities of modern hoteliers. We know this because we work with successful hotels around the world that use our Property Management System, complete with booking engine and a host of other features. We’d love to get you started knowing more about SabeeApp. So if you follow the steps to create a stunning website, we’ll make the back and front office functions fully integrated, with all the tools you’ll ever need to automate your hotel operations and grow your business. And that’s by design.