Your guests’ feedback can provide invaluable insight that can be utilized to optimize your hotel business, yet many hotels fail to fully exploit its opportunities by not making use of customer feedback.
Feedback from guests can increase the visibility of your hotel website by ranking higher in organic searches and encouraging more direct bookings.
1. Ensure it’s mobile-friendly
Hotel websites are essential components of an hotel’s online marketing and customer service strategies, providing potential guests with all the answers to all their inquiries about your property, such as its location, amenities, types of rooms available and booking process. A top hotel website may even help increase direct bookings while decreasing reliance on third-party travel portals.
Due to travelers relying more on mobile devices for booking travel arrangements and planning trips, hotels should ensure their websites are responsive and optimised for mobile. This means adapting easily to any screen size or orientation and providing all key information readily accessible from a mobile device.
As part of providing guests with an enjoyable online hotel booking experience, ensuring your website loads quickly is also essential. A slow website may become frustrating for visitors and discourage booking with you. To improve website speed, remove unnecessary elements like large images or videos; consider also choosing a website builder like Strikingly that comes equipped with fast mobile websites as standard.
Finally, make sure that your website’s speed is properly assessed using an effective tool like BrowserStack SpeedLab. This program runs a series of tests across various real-world browser-device combinations to give an in-depth report of its performance.
Visitors to your hotel website expect to quickly and easily locate the information they are searching for quickly and effortlessly, which means avoiding distractions like music, animations or flashing text. Instead, create a website which is uncluttered and highlights all essential information on each page.
If your goal is to maximize direct bookings, it’s essential that your hotel website features an obvious “Book Now” button that is always visible during a visitor’s stay. Make sure it stands out with its prominent positioning and use contrasting colors; additionally, choose an integrated hotel booking engine that integrates well with PMS systems.
2. Make it easy to book
Your hotel website is an effective tool in attracting guests, as it serves as an online showcase of all of your property’s finest attributes – rates, room availability and amenities among them. Therefore, keeping it current ensures guests can easily locate all the information they need to book their stay or have any inquiries addressed quickly and efficiently.
Many guests begin their hotel search online using search engines; therefore it is vital that your website appears among relevant results. This can be achieved by optimizing for search engines (SEO) and making sure all meta tags are accurate.
As part of your website strategy, it’s also crucial that guests can connect with you through social media links, sharing their experiences through blog posts, photos or live updates. Remarketing could also help encourage potential guests who have visited but have yet to book at your hotel – targeting these potential guests with ads on other websites or via email is a good way to encourage booking.
Accumulating data about your hotel customers is crucial for improving their experience and driving bookings. This information may come from various sources, including direct bookings, feedback from online reviews or surveys, insights gained through loyalty schemes or web analytics trends – once combined you can form a detailed profile of the typical guest and tailor their stay accordingly.
Utilize data to identify areas for improvement and leverage what’s working well. For instance, if most of your guests enjoy dining in your restaurant on site, use this insight in your marketing campaigns and highlight this as an area for expansion to attract more new customers.
Feedback can help identify staff training needs. This could include anything from providing a list of possible discussion topics, or going even deeper by offering training in customer service, communication skills or specific technical knowledge.
Encourage your employees to be proactive in meeting customer needs by giving them the freedom and authority to perform their duties without needing permission from management.
3. Show the right sources
Even reviews that may seem negative can have a hugely beneficial effect on your hotel and can bring more guests through its doors. When reviewing them properly, reviews can elevate its reputation and motivate guests to visit. Responding quickly when someone complains will demonstrate your customer care – this way they’ll feel understood while building loyalty and trust among visitors! Attract positive feedback by showing appreciation in form of scrolling quotes or gold stars (the latter also works great!) to increase visitorship!
Even with the rise in online reviews, direct guest feedback remains vitally important. Surveys and questionnaires can reach guests who may not have access to the internet or need some other way of engaging. Responding quickly to guest comments also sets you apart from competitors while building long-term loyalty with your guests.
4. Highlight positive reviews
No business – hotels included – can thrive without customer feedback and sentiment analysis. Taking proactive steps to gather guest sentiment analysis and provide a platform for guests to express their opinions publicly will create more positive marketing for your hotel brand online and increase bookings while creating loyal customer bases. Reviews also can play an integral part in cultivating great reputations leading to more bookings and building loyalty among guests.
Although some hotels avoid review management, it can be an invaluable asset in creating positive marketing and strengthening brand loyalty. Here are a few techniques for maximising positive reviews while mitigating any negative ones.
Responding to online reviews is an excellent way to demonstrate that you value customer feedback and are committed to improvement. When responding, be sincere and professional in your responses – never degenerating into defensive dialogue or becoming defensive yourself. Responding quickly and thoughtfully when responding to negative reviews shows your guests you prioritize their needs and may provide the chance for them to turn the situation around.
Alongside responding to negative feedback, it’s also important to promote positive reviews on your website. By featuring scrolling quotes and gold stars for positive comments from visitors, they may feel inspired to write reviews of their own and share positive experiences – helping increase credibility for potential guests who visit your hotel brand.
Negative reviews can have a devastating impact on your online reputation, so it is crucial that any issues raised are immediately addressed in order to safeguard it and reduce bookings. Delay could damage it further – possibly leading to less bookings overall.
By taking the time to listen to and respond promptly to guest conversations, you can improve hotel operations, increase online presence and drive more bookings. With just a bit of extra attention paid to detail, your hotel could become an experience people will rave about to friends and family! So what are you waiting for? Get listening!