Top tips on maximising your online presence

October 11th, 2009

Samantha Hasler who leads the digital marketing team at GlobRes highlights essential website knowledge to maximise your hotels online marketing presence.

Marketing efforts are often perceived as required solely to generate traffic and reservations to hotels.

But marketing should be playing an even bigger role in terms of website content.

A good website is more than just flashy designs, layouts and pictures - it has to have substance.

Your website copy must sell your hotel rooms. With the high levels of competition for all hotels, consumers are able to use stricter criteria when narrowing down hotel choice.

Therefore, the amount of information you give on your site and the manner in which it is put across, has a serious impact on your conversion rates. Website content is known for its significance within search engine criteria for measuring organic rankings.

This is because it is in the interest of search engines to provide users with relevant, high quality results. Because there are millions of websites returned for popular keyword searches, the criteria have to contain a more thorough analysis of websites.

This is another reason why content is so important.

Compelling content plays an important role in online success. Not only does it assist you in organic rankings and traffic acquisition, but it also serves to add value to your site visitors’ experience.

It gives your visitors confidence in your hotel and it gets them excited about your property! The more positive an experience website visitors have on your site, the more likely they are to choose your hotel.

There are always other contributing factors to getting that all important reservation – room rates, location, facilities will all still continue to hold weight, but when you have ticked all these boxes and your content lets you down, you may lose out.

How do you make sure this doesn’t happen?

Analyse your current content - How many pages do you have? Are they structured appropriately? You must always avoid duplicate content – it undermines the professionalism of the site and the search engines will view this negatively when indexing your site.

Is your content compelling? To make pages a pleasant read, you must ensure that sentences are not too long and they are short and imaginative. Travelers generally choose destination before hotel.

Therefore, it is surprising how many hotel websites do not have a menu tab dedicated to location and the features of the location together with a map of the hotel’s precise locality.

Providing your website visitors with information about the destination is a great way of demonstrating your relevance to their search for a hotel.

Dedicate a page to important information about the hotel. Include the services, amenities and facilities on offer and detail the number of restaurants and bars the hotel has.

It should be clear whether the hotel is focused on relaxation, leisure or business. Alternatively, it may be a city centre hotel focused on sight seeing and activities.

All key attributes and selling points must be readily available on this vital page of the site and communicated clearly and effectively using appropriate terminology. Devote a page to your hotel’s room types.

To drive your online sales, you must show the choice available to your guests fully. If your pricing varies from room to room, you need to demonstrate the reasons for this through your pictures and descriptions.

Room descriptions are of key interest, you should include information on bed types, room sizes, air conditioning and heating, wifi availability, safety deposit boxes and refrigerators as standard.

The features that really sell and differentiate each room type can range from special linens, turn down services, Jacuzzis, special furniture or perhaps even chandeliers – make sure you include any features like this on this page.

Remember, if you do not provide the information, you are potentially under-selling your hotel. But at the same time, the information you do supply, needs to be well written, imaginative and accurate.

Reviewing content on a weekly basis is always advisable and adding new and fresh content, encourages the search engines to return to your site and re-index its importance and value. This also keeps your regular visitors engaged with your website and demonstrates your continued commitment to your website’s online presence.

About GlobRes

GlobRes provide hotel reservations and marketing solutions for hoteliers globally.

GlobRes offer hotel website design for free when purchased with hotel reservation systems. Complete our online contact form for more information.