Hotelier Middle East collaborates with Arabian Travel Market 2016 to find out how hotels can capitalise on the new digital era of sales
Paul: Tips for building a winning search engine strategy?
Ali: It’s about giving users a positive experience when they land on your website. You need to understand what your user is doing online. It was mentioned by Kevin that 61% of the hotel queries that take place in MENEA take place on mobile. The second largest search engine, YouTube, is 68%. It behoves most brands to take mobile into conversation. Google has nudged the ecosystem along with an update that came about a few months ago. Pay attention to mobile and algorithm updates. Second is video. We’re some of the largest consumers of video. Saudi Arabia is the largest consumer of YouTube content, ahead of the US. Most of that content is done off mobile. Video also has a very important role. If you go back to the first principle, creating a positive experience. If people land on your website and you have a good video, they will engage for longer. It’s going to rank higher. Particularly for folks looking to reach out to Middle Eastern consumers.
James: A contentious thought. Is it the end of SEO? The reality is, you need to advertise. Most of the time you put a query in, 95% of the time you get adverts. If you’re really going to get people coming to your website, that’s where you should be spending your money.
Ali: We would agree with that. They’re not replaceable. Brands have to get their voice out there. ‘Everyone knows about us. Everyone.’ So what? So you shouldn’t advertise? Or you shouldn’t advertise in a particular way? The SEO results will drive you to it. If you think about it more broadly, yes, you should have good content. Some organic people are going to click on organic. Anecdotally, some people prefer organic links.
Kevin C: From our point of view, in the last 9-10 months, we’ve invested a lot of time with people from Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Two years ago they would have said, ‘How do we get as many people come to our website as possible?’ We would have helped them do that. ‘What do you want them to find out about Dubai?’ ‘Great for culture.’ ‘Type in what’s good for culture.’ It’s probably going to be a TripAdvisor link. Probably worry less about investing loads in your site and making it amazing. They’re probably going to come to us anyway. Not really SEO in that sense but because our SEO is so strong, they probably can’t compete with us.
Meritxell: A search engine should solve the problems of a traveller. Technology should be able to show the traveller key relevant content. And the quality of content is key.
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