Your hotel website should reflect all the essential information potential guests need about your business and will want to see. A professional design will drive conversions and expand revenue.
High-quality photography is also essential, and will draw customers in and help your company stand out from its competition.
Intuitive Navigation
Your hotel website serves as the digital representation of your business, so it’s crucial that it contains features to lure potential guests in and convert them to bookers. These should include user-friendly navigation and quality visuals – these essential hotel website features can create an unforgettable digital experience that conveys your brand story while convincing travelers to choose your property over others.
Your hotel website should offer easy navigation with intuitive content organization and labeling to meet user expectations. Furthermore, its design must remain consistent so visitors know which page they’re currently on and how they can go back if they become disoriented.
Provide information about your hotel and amenities that can help your guests determine whether they’re interested in booking it and make informed decisions for themselves based on what they see – for instance highlighting that there is a pool so visitors can see it before making up their mind whether to stay there or not.
Your hotel website should feature a special offers section to showcase any discounts or packages you are providing, which will increase direct bookings and drive more revenue for your hotel. Be sure to provide clear details regarding each offer including its terms and conditions as well as an FAQs page so as to address any common guest queries and concerns.
Your hotel website should also feature an efficient booking engine to allow guests to reserve rooms directly with your hotel, helping reduce reliance on third-party booking aggregators while improving user experience.
Mobile-Responsive Design
As more and more travelers use multiple devices to research, plan and book travel, hotel websites that don’t cater to mobile users are quickly becoming an industry standard. Consumers expect fast-loading sites that display properly regardless of which device is being used to access it – without this feature in place, visitors may become quickly disenchanted with your hotel website and move onto something more responsive instead.
Storytelling is key to turning lookers into guests at any hotel or establishment, helping your hotel to stand out from competitors while informing consumers what makes your property special. To accentuate this experience, include eye-catching photographs along with descriptions that showcase amenities and attractions at your establishment. Text is powerfully emotive when written professionally – as it conveys emotion as well as strengthening brand equity.
One feature every hotel website should offer visitors is direct booking capability. By adding this button, it allows your hotel website to compete against online travel agencies (OTAs) and increase conversion rates. To maximize impactful conversion rates it’s also essential that the button be clearly visible with contrasting color to stand out – having an integrated booking engine connected to your PMS will guarantee smooth visitor experiences.
Contact information on your hotel website allows visitors to quickly get in touch with you if they have any inquiries. This is particularly important for mobile users, who tend to browse on smartphones while traveling. Ensure your hotel’s phone number, address and email are easy to locate – with clickable phone numbers that dial directly, map-oriented addresses that open in Google Maps and messages-ready emails addresses that instantly open a new message thread.
Load time is an integral component of search engine optimization, with Google favoring sites with faster load times. To lower your website’s load times and boost performance and conversion rates, optimize server settings, compress image files, and reduce plugin count. Furthermore, invest in managed hosting service that offers performance monitoring and speed optimization to further speed up website loading times and enhance user engagement and conversion rates.
High-Resolution Images
High-resolution images have become an indispensable asset in driving customer engagement and conversions across industries, particularly hotels and property listings. Professional photos taken of hotels’ homepages or individual property pages could make the difference between someone booking their stay or simply moving onto another hotel website.
High-resolution photos tend to load more quickly than low-res images, so if you want your site to run smoothly make sure to optimize images before uploading them – either using an online image editor such as Pixlr or photo-editing software such as Photoshop and Illustrator.
Research has demonstrated that hotel websites featuring high-quality images and videos with engaging storytelling capabilities are more likely to generate direct bookings. It is essential, however, that content provided on a hotel’s website be both useful and pertinent – such as general descriptions of each room type with specifications and amenities as well as list of available services, reservation policies, as well as bulleted lists for inclusions for each room type.
As part of your hotel website’s overall strategy, including multiple images that showcase its surroundings can give potential guests an idea of what awaits them during their stay. Be wary though of using too many images as this may cause choice paralysis and have detrimental impacts on consumer behaviour (Chan et al, 2020).
Investment in your hotel website is integral to expanding your business, and hotel brands that rely on SiteMinder for web design often experience direct correlation between quality of their new website and increased search engine results page rankings, higher conversion rates and increased direct bookings. Looking for an affordable way to launch a great-looking site that meets business goals quickly and simply? Give SiteMinder’s website builder a try now – designed specifically for hotels it provides an effortless means of creating stunning websites which support their goals with ease!
Easy Booking
Your hotel website should be an essential element of your hospitality marketing strategy, providing users with an enjoyable online experience that loads quickly. Mobile devices must also work as intended with this design so it won’t become an obstacle to bookings rather than driving them forward.
Your hotel website should include an integrated booking engine to facilitate the online reservation process and provide guests with all of the information they require for making reservations, such as dates, room type and any add-ons they might want. Linked with your property management system so it can display live rates and availability information – giving your visitors the information they need to book reservations while simultaneously turning visitors into loyal customers.
Consider providing your guests with an online booking form, so they can submit their reservation requests without the hassle of manually inputting their requests. Offer add-ons and discounts to encourage bookings – this will increase conversions and revenues!
High-resolution images can draw in prospective guests by showcasing your hotel’s distinctive features. If possible, invest in professional photography so that the best moments and amenities of your accommodations can be captured; virtual tours could even be included to showcase everything about them!
An FAQ page is another essential element to include on your site, providing answers and solutions for guests’ inquiries and allowing them to book without calling or emailing you directly. Consider including lead magnets such as eBooks, newsletters or product trials as incentives to make reservations with you.
Your hotel website needs to be fast and responsive if you want to retain customers. A slow site can make visitors dissatisfied and cause them to leave quickly, which will hinder conversions. To prevent this from happening, your website should have fast loading speeds with optimized images for faster conversion rates.
There are numerous essential features a hotel website should possess, but these five essentials can serve as a good foundation upon which to build. By taking advantage of them, you may soon become a hospitality powerhouse!