Hotels should pursue an inclusive marketing approach that blends online travel agency (OTA) booking channels and direct booking channels. This should involve optimizing hotel websites, offering exclusive loyalty programs, utilizing metasearch engines and employing digital marketing strategies.
Enhancing website conversion rates through high-quality visuals, user-friendly booking process and clear calls-to-action is vital to increasing website conversion rates. Furthermore, offering special deals such as discounts or packages with improved cancellation policies and amenities may encourage guests to book directly instead of going through third-party websites.
Optimize Your Website for Conversions
Your hotel website is one of the most valuable tools in your marketing arsenal, enabling you to drive traffic, showcase rooms and amenities, and convert visitors into guests. Unfortunately, many hotels fail to optimize their websites for conversions, leading to low direct bookings and lost revenue. But there are numerous ways that can improve and increase bookings on their site.
Start with an intuitive design for users. Make sure your website is responsive and optimized for mobile devices, with clear booking buttons visible across all pages. Add high-quality visuals that give a complete picture of your hotel; for example if it offers picturesque landscape perfect for wedding photography then feature this on the website to sway potential guests to book!
Consider including additional services on your hotel website. For example, if your property offers spa, golf, or restaurant amenities that may be missed by competitors and increase booking conversion rate.
Kissmetrics reports that 47% of consumers expect websites to load within 2 seconds or less and 40% abandon pages that take more than three seconds. Furthermore, Google now uses site speed as a ranking factor so slow loading times could negatively impact search engine rankings.
If your hotel website is failing to convert visitors into bookings, it’s time for changes. Start by understanding your booking funnel and pinpointing where people are dropping out. Address these barriers using strategies such as improving web design and user experience; providing clear next steps in the booking process and dispelling common myths about your hotel; as well as paying attention to micro-conversions like subscribing to newsletters or reviewing packages – small steps which add up over time can bring in direct bookings that lead directly back to you!
Optimize Your Booking Profile
If your hotel uses its website to promote itself and generate bookings, the best possible booking engine should be implemented on it. A user-friendly and responsive booking engine will help your hotel attract and retain visitors while increasing direct online bookings. Furthermore, keeping the content fresh – articles about current happenings at your hotel, promotions in place at nearby establishments, food festivals etc) on the site is vital in engaging visitors who come visit with conversion to actual bookings.
Optimize your booking page with high-quality photos and videos of your property, rooms, and amenities. These visuals will act as eye-catching tools that draw potential guests’ attention and persuade them to book at your hotel. Use different image categories/labels to emphasize certain features such as exterior, interior, room or food and drink offerings; don’t forget your business address/contact information/booking policies on the website too!
Make sure your hotel booking link is featured on its Google Business Profile to optimize booking process and encourage direct bookings while saving commission fees from online travel agencies (OTA).
Promoting your hotel on metasearch engines is another effective way of increasing its presence in the travel market and driving bookings. Metasearch engines allow your hotel to reach a wider audience, quickly filling rooms faster than its website alone could do so. But to maximize effectiveness, rate parity between channels must remain consistent so as to attract high-intent visitors who may book directly with you hotel.
Add value to your online bookings by offering a guest follow-up system, which enables you to send personalized messages before, during, and after their stay. A messaging app such as Velma automates this process while gathering email addresses and other key data points from your PMS for further customization of their experience.
Optimize Your Mobile Website
Hotel websites can be an extremely effective sales and marketing tool. As an extension of the brand, they provide legitimacy to a property, while in today’s information age are one of the primary sources for information about a location. Furthermore, hotel websites are an effective way of driving online bookings but in order to do this effectively they must be optimised accordingly.
As more people use mobile devices to search and book hotels, optimizing your hotel website for mobile optimization should be of utmost importance. This includes making sure it’s user-friendly with less clicks needed for booking as well as using fonts that are optimized for mobile viewing.
Make sure your website loads quickly; slow websites are an unpleasant user experience and can have a devastating effect on search engine rankings. When assessing your performance, compare it with that of competitors using tools such as PageSpeed Insights to gauge where you stand among them.
Consider offering irresistible packages and promotions on your hotel’s website as a means to drive direct bookings and increase occupancy rates. Offering free room upgrades or discounted spa treatments may do the trick, or providing digital guides of local attractions or activities can even increase occupancy levels significantly.
Consider investing in a mobile application for your hotel as another method to allow guests to manage bookings and reservations on-the-go and increase customer satisfaction by giving guests instantaneous access to essential information at any given moment.
Not only can you boost direct bookings, but you can also maximize revenue by employing effective marketing strategies, improving guest reviews and ratings, using dynamic pricing strategies, offering irresistible packages or promotions and driving online bookings easily – not to mention increasing occupancy rate at your hotel! Don’t delay, start increasing website traffic now to start turning visitors into bookers!
Encourage Booking Abandonment
Booking abandonment is one of the primary issues hoteliers must contend with, with estimates suggesting the travel industry experiences some of the highest cart abandonment rates of any industry, resulting in lost revenue for hotels. While eliminating booking abandonment altogether may be impossible, there are tactics you can implement to mitigate its effect and encourage guests to rebook again.
Booking abandonment often stems from guests thinking a stay will be too expensive. To prevent this from occurring, emphasize your hotel’s unique selling points in marketing materials and online – such as its prime location or stellar staff – to show guests that it’s worth their while staying there. By emphasizing its worthiness to potential guests, highlighting it may help convince them it is indeed worth paying the cost.
One way to reduce booking abandonment is to streamline the booking process as much as possible, which means limiting the pages and fields guests need to complete, as well as any unnecessary steps or processes. Furthermore, make sure all relevant information for booking can be found on one page – having to click through several pages can be distracting, dissuading guests from continuing.
As part of your booking experience, it is also crucial to communicate any additional fees or charges associated with it clearly and communicated beforehand to prevent surprises for guests during checkout and abandoned bookings. Furthermore, provide multiple payment methods so they may choose which one best fits them.
Avoid forcing guests to create an account before making their booking, as this can be a turnoff for customers requiring two-step verification processes or receiving codes via phones. Instead, allow customers to create accounts once their reservation has been confirmed – this may be more convenient and not deter them from booking with your hotel!
Implementing on-site tactics, optimizing checkout flow and developing effective recovery emails are effective strategies for minimizing booking abandonment and increasing conversions at your hotel. But to truly convert potential bookings to actual ones, the best strategy is ensuring guests experience your hotel as smoothly and comfortably as possible – which means providing memorable guest service from start to finish!