In a new three-part series, Hotelier Middle East explores the changing landscape of hotel reservations. Here, we focus on search engine optimisation and discover how to make sure your hotel is visible online
otels in the Middle East have recently been reporting significant successes when it comes to online bookings, which now dominate the hotel reservation landscape. According to Insights Middle East, around two thirds of all bookings are coming through digital channels, with online penetration in the UAE market topping 84%.
However, with most bookings coming through aggregation websites such as Booking.com or Expedia — rather than the more cost-effective route of direct bookings — there is much more to be done.
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In the first of this new series exploring hotel reservation trends — which will cover the full spectrum from search engine optimisation (SEO) to developing your own booking engine to mobile bookings — we go back to the beginning of the process.
To enable consumers to book at your hotel online, you must firstly ensure it is as visible as possible on the internet, particularly in Google searches. This is where SEO comes in — and according to our experts, it’s well worth the investment for large chains and small independents alike.
As Lee Mancini, managing director of Sekari, a Dubai-based search engine optimisation (SEO) agency, optimistically states: “It’s a real open door for anyone at the moment”. He warns that the global giants need to think more locally when it comes to SEO.
“The international brands will suffer because they perhaps don’t have as many of the local indicators — they’ll be spending on a global scale, but not on the local indicators, or looking at the local, regional links,” says Mancini.
On the flip side, while regional chains are likely to have this knowledge, they have been more reluctant to invest, reports Grand Millennium Dubai’s director of revenue Oussama Chalak.
“Smaller hotel chains and independent hotels are yet to realise how essential it is to have some strategies and yearly budget allocated for SEO.”
But, optimising your web presence does not have to be an expensive task to undertake — as long as you have a marketing department that can dedicate time and effort to the process. Some hotels may choose to appoint an external firm but this isn’t strictly necessary admits James Lowery, head of SEO at digital marketing agency Latitude.
“There’s nothing that an SEO agency does that someone internally can’t do,” asserts Lowery.
Consider Keywords
The place to start when implementing SEO is with the use of keywords, agree Lowery and Mancini. First, hotels need to research the market to see what keywords are working for competitors on search engines.
“What you want to do is search for what you expect people to search for when they’re looking for you,” says Lowery.
He recommends that aspiring SEO masters then look at the websites of hotels appearing on the first page of searches and analyse why they’re appearing to the target clientele, that is, what key words they are using in their page titles and the body copy. Too often, website text is not adequately tailored to SEO requirements.
At Hospitality Management Holdings’ (HMH), vice president of e-commerce development Girma Wossenseged says that 65% of all bookings are through online channels.
He advises: “First and foremost, one should pick up the right keywords, which is not done often. Secondly, the content has to be correctly defined without overloading it with different keywords. It has to be created for your target audience in a creative and concise way”.
One way to find keywords that work is by first carrying out a pay per click (PPC) campaign, says Mancini. “PPC is a great way to bridge the gap before you get a high ranking. The great thing about PPC is that it gives us the data we need. From PPC we’re able to seek out all of the key phrases, which are the ones that people are clicking through and booking from. You then use that data to influence SEO campaigns,” Mancini adds.
Lowery agrees, saying that it’s a great indicator for offers — “hotels can test whether their customers click more on the heading 50% off or $50 off”.
Google’s head of travel for the Gulf, Marie de Ducla, says that even when competing against the biggest hotel brands, independent hotels “have all the chances in the world” to make it onto the search engine’s first page of results — “if their keywords are well defined and precise”.
She says that by using phrases such as ‘Dubai hotel’, “chains and independents are competing against online travel agents, so they need to be quite specific so that they don’t compete on too generic terms.”
For example, Google reports that searches for hotels with wi-fi have increased 10% in the last 12 months alone, while searches for ‘hotels with free wi-fi’ are up 30% in the same period.
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