When planning the online marketing strategy for your hotel website it is crucial you think like your potential guests. Users searching in Google for hotels will not know the individual URL of your hotel website and will therefore be using generic search terms in order to find accommodation to suit them.

Only around 20% of internet users search for hotels using the brand name which leaves 80% of your target market searching on factors which are important to them when booking a hotel, e.g. special offers, location etc. Your hotel then appears amongst the competition in the search results - unlike offline media, in the online space it is much easier to compare your effectiveness against your competitors in terms of positions in the search results.

Location is the biggest factor in a person’s decision of which hotel they will stay in. They will have decided on the location of where they want to visit before they begin looking for accommodation.

It is essential, therefore that your site is created with SEO in mind – you need to ensure your content is keyword optimised to include the region your hotel is in; your websites technical structure is easily accessible by the search engines plus that your website utilises search engine friendly URL’s.

We have many years experience of building SEO friendly hotel websites, to find out more about what Motive Technology could do for your hotel, click here.

In order to achieve online success with their proprietary websites, hoteliers should have their own blog and update it on a regular basis. Even the big brand hotel chains now have their own blog and in the case of Marriott hotels it is actually the CEO who blogs on behalf of the organisation, highlighting the credibility of this new Web 2.0 aspect of the Internet.

Having your own blog gives the hotel the opportunity to get its own opinion across to potential guests and with the ability for guests to make their own contributions and respond to your blog posts it works to develop a closer relationship with your guests.

Trading online obviously means that you lose that one to one contact with guests that you achieve in the hotel itself – having a blog is one way that you can recreate this relationship over the internet.

Unlike the rest of the website which needs to remain mostly formal and project the right image of the hotel brand, a blog is a much less regimented area where you can speak on a level with guests and use more colloquial language.

The blog will provide guests somewhere they can ask questions and make suggestions for any improvements they think you can make to the hotel.

Although the idea of guests being free to say what they want about your hotel on your website is a slightly scary prospect, it is better to have people posting about this on your blog where you can respond quickly and effectively than on another website where you will not know that a negative comment has been made and therefore unable to respond. Unlike the rest of the site a blog can be updated very quickly meaning you can respond to any comments almost immediately this has already proved an invaluable capability for many big brand names.

If you’d like to find out more about the benefits of blogging for your hotel feel free to contact our HotelTeam

The introduction of 3D Secure payment technology and the advantages it can provide to retail websites has been much discussed in the world of ecommerce. This technology also holds great benefits for the hotel industry, with its introduction to proprietary hotel websites helping to further build trust in purchasing a room booking online.

3D Secure payment technology requires the guest to register their credit/debit card online with their card issuer, by answering a series of questions and then setting up a password which will be used for every card transaction carried out online. The thinking behind it is that once a guest has registered as a 3D Secure user, even if someone obtains their card or their card details they will be unable to make fraudulent purchases unless they also know your personal password.

Like ecommerce websites, hoteliers must ensure that they keep 100% of visitors trust in order to be successful and increase online bookings with the hotel. It is crucial that visitor’s feel safe to book with your hotel site and not shop around. There are a few simple methods that can build trust:

• Detailed About Us section – the more people know about the hotel and it’s history, the greater the affinity they will have with it

• Testimonials – having real comments from people who have stayed in the hotel will ensure visitors to the website think you are honest and are not afraid of publishing what guests have said about the hotel

• Visible SSL certificate – so the user can see a small gold padlock in their browser and know your website is secure.

• Easy access to all legal information appertaining to the hotel

These simple methods will assist a hotel’s own proprietary website to generate around 5 times as many bookings as third party sites.

As 3D Secure technology becomes a more regular process when buying products online (it is predicted to be the industry standard by the end of the year) visitors booking with your website will expect to see this level of security.

If you’d like to find out more about 3D Secure technology and how you can integrate to your online booking process, contact our hotel team who will be only too happy to talk you through it.

As we have discussed in a previous blog, the potential of Web 2.0 in the hotel industry is huge. In particular, online video tours of the hotel are a fantastic opportunity to ‘sell’ your hotel to visitors to your website.

Online videos are an ideal marketing tool for hotels. Potential visitors browsing online continue to expect more from hotel sites and in order to beat the competition it is essential that these expectations are met.

A high quality video that users can easily stream from your home page featuring beautiful imagery of your hotel will be more effective than just still images alone. As well as generating bookings for accommodation, these videos can also generate interest in conference and business facilities at your hotel.

Along with attracting visitors to the hotel, the presence of an online video on your site will improve the overall image of your hotel brand to web users.

The more engaging content you have on your site, the longer visitors will spend browsing and the higher the chance of repeat visits will be. Thus resulting in an increased number of bookings with the hotel.

To see the video tour we have recently implemented into the sites of one of hotel clients, No Ordinary Hotels, visit:

http://www.coombeabbey.com/

http://www.lumleycastle.com/

Hoteliers are now developing their own proprietary websites rather than relying on 3rd party distributors to attract visitors to their hotel.

Hotel sites need to keep up with consumer expectations and provide content rich visual experiences, plus up-to-date information and offers that will entice them to book with the hotel.

That said, a hotel website must still conform to the necessary conventions of good website design and usability. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the visual elements of a website, forgetting about the needs of your user and the technical elements needed for a successful sales and marketing tool.

When designing a new hotel website you must balance key usability requirements to ensure a booking, with the technical elements that will enable potential customers to find your website such as:

Usability Features:

• Relevant content portraying your brand experience online
• Uncomplicated, logical navigation
• Simplified booking processes (see our online reservations software demo) with real time availability and pricing
• Video tours/virtual tours/image galleries
• Calls to action/marketing messages
• Brochure downloads

Plus the technical elements such as:

• Well constructed pages that allow search engines easy access to your text content
• Optimised keyword rich content
• Navigation that can be searched and indexed by search engines
• SEO friendly URL’s
• Site maps to assist search engines to index your site

A common error with hotel website design is to overuse Flash imagery which will not be picked up by the search engines, and poor navigation which will deter potential customers from booking with your website.

A void appears to have emerged between web designers and those involved in online marketing. On the one hand you have designers understandably excited about the visual possibilities of a website and on the other you have marketers obsessed with keeping the search engines and users happy.

In order for online success, hotel websites must merge these two requirements together to produce an aesthetically pleasing website that is structurally sound and SEO friendly.

Ensuring that the site follows the correct coding structure in the first stages of the site being built will also prevent the site
from having to be re-designed in the future which would incur further costs.

Consumer Generated Media is a much talked about area of Internet marketing for Hoteliers. The explosion of consumer generated media (CGM) marks a distinct shift in how people are interacting with the internet. Traditionally the web was a one sided medium with users exposed to whatever providers wanted them to see. Now users are actually creating their own content and deciding for themselves what they want to see and when.

The issue for hoteliers is how to best use CGM to their advantage - there are areas where they are clear opportunities for the hotel industry to benefit from this new medium but conversely there are potential threats as well.

There are three main approaches to utilising CGM strategies for your hotel:

• To protect and monitor conversations on the web about your hotel
• To promote the expert knowledge that you have within your Hotel staff
• To utilise CGM for SEO purposes: from additional pages of content being continually being added to your website, to the opportunity to use keyword rich text to assist search engine rankings for your website.

The potential threat to your hotel from CGM is the opportunity it presents for disgruntled guests to post negative reviews about their experience of your hotel. The thing to bear in mind here is that there are so many sites that will already be displaying these views; surely it is better for your business and your brand to be included in the conversation, rather than not responding to negative criticism.

It is a crucial element of both Customer Services plus Marketing/PR strategies that hoteliers monitor social networking sites to try and contain any negative reviews and minimise the damage they have. A promptly responded to negative review can be easily be turned into a positive as long as it is handled correctly. Plus of course positive reviews can reveal new stories that can be turned into excellent PR opportunities.

The opportunities to promote your hotel through CGM are to utilise the expert knowledge you have within your hotel staff eg:

• Your Head Chef/Executive Chefs blogging about the local produce that they buy, quality of produce, range of dishes, recipe ideas etc
• Your Head of Reception/Customer Services talking about new procedures they are using or technology they have installed eg mobile check in/check out to improve your service offerings

Using a combination of all methods available within CGM, if written correctly, will have a huge impact on your web footprint (size and reach of your website) plus a positive impact on your search engine ranking.

Find out more about integrating CGM into your hotel website strategy

Welcome to the new Motive Technology Hotel Blog. We are very excited about the launch of this blog and hope it will be an informative and useful resource as well as showcasing marketing hints and tips for the industry.

We are looking forward to engaging with other people involved in the hotel sector and discussing various aspects of the industry from website design to marketing.