It is important for hoteliers to protect their brand image online. More and more the Internet is being dominated by your guests – social networking sites, blogs and forums allow users to project their own beliefs about your hotel across the Web. This is fine if the opinion is good, however, it is inevitable that some people will have negative comments to make about the service they received with your hotel.

There is no way of stopping your guests from discussing the experience they have had of your hotel website, however, there are ways of monitoring and reacting to these discussions in order to minimise the damage caused to your online reputation.

You need to ensure that you are leading the way when it comes to your hotel’s online reputation. This can be achieved through basic SEO techniques, ensuring that you are appearing as high as possible in the search results and therefore higher than other references to your hotel.

Another crucial part of your online strategy should be interacting with your guests and responding to what is being said. If a negative comment is posted about your hotel online, the best way to limit the potential damage to your reputation is to react quickly and effectively.

If a guest has talked about a negative experience with you, it is crucial that you can respond and show that customer care is high on your priority list, if they are complaining about either the hotel itself or the hotel website you must be seen to be willing to make improvements in light of their comments.

To find out how Motive can ensure you are promoting the right image of your hotel online. Talk to our Hotel Team.

A major factor in online success is testing. Your hotel website should be tested on a regular basis in order to ensure your clients are being given the best service and your brand is being represented in the most appropriate, professional manner.

Every aspect of your hotel website should be tested and re-tested. Obviously achieving the maximum number of conversions is the main objective for your website and unless it is tested regularly there are countless different ways you could be losing potential business.

The most obvious reason for testing is, of course, to make sure your hotel site actually works. Any issues or faults with your site will be easily picked up by the user, therefore regular testing prevents your potential clients from developing a negative image of your brand. If your website is disappointing or faulty it will give the user a negative image of your company as a whole.

The term testing can also relate to other aspects of managing your website, however. Testing out different styles and approaches with your website will allow you to work out which method works best with your targeted audience.

Cookie tracking and various web statistic packages enable you to track precisely what is happening in the site and react positively as a result.

Try rotating different images and headlines on pages within the site then tracking the number of hits and click-throughs achieved with the different styles. This will help to determine what is the most effective strategy for your site.

Calls to action are key when attempting to guide users through your site; you should try out different phrases and see how it affects your conversion rates.

Success with your website is trial and error. Your website shouldn’t be a static thing that once launched is left alone. You should be constantly updating, adding to and tweaking various parts of the site to meet the needs of your users and maximise the revenue you get from it.

To find out how Motive can help you maximise the potential of your website, please get in touch with our Hotel Team.

In the offline world, booking a hotel and choosing where you want to stay is an enjoyable and leisurely experience. People browse through travel brochures and have long discussions with travel agents over where would be best to visit and which hotel would be best suited to their needs.

Is it possible to recreate this relaxing experience in the online world?

E-commerce is very much driven by ensuring that consumers can find what they want as quickly and easily as possible. However, is this really the route that hotel websites should follow? Perhaps consumers want to repeat the laid back experience they have of booking a holiday offline when they are booking through a hotel website?

It is always important to provide those users who already know what they want with the ability book quickly through your hotel website - with the fewest clicks possible. However, hotel websites need to provide users who are just browsing to come up with ideas of possible locations for their holiday plenty of material to look through at their leisure.

Having pages in the site with pictures, video tours, testimonials and other features will help a user who is still making up their mind to be inclined to book with your hotel. Interactive features that are fun and easy to use will help to re-create the informal chats people have with travel agents – hotels could even adopt a Live Chat service where potential guests can chat directly with the hotel.

Hotel websites with the ability to satisfy bookers who want immediacy and those who want to take their time and deliberate over their travel arrangements will be the most successful.

To find out how Motive can ensure that your hotel website appeals to all guests no matter what they requirements – speak to our Hotel Team.

Corporate responsibility and an acceptable carbon footprint is an issue that is becoming increasingly important to commercial success for all hotel businesses.

The issue of your carbon footprint has become a global problem and as a result a key trend in how a hotel markets itself to potential visitors. More and more guests are taking the environmental policy of a hotel into consideration when choosing their accommodation. Your hotel will be much more attractive to visitors if you have a clear and thorough strategy to ensure your hotel is environmentally responsible.

Your website is a great way of communicating this strategy with your guests and demonstrating the steps you are taking to reduce your carbon footprint.
A great example of a website that has done this is Intercontinental Hotels:

http://www.ihgplc.com/innovation/

They have demonstrated the changes they have made in and around the hotel to ensure they are reducing their carbon footprint. They have managed to do this in a fun and interesting way that will appeal to potential visitors browsing the site and also be picked up by various blogs due to its innovative and fun usability. The more it gets talked about the more interest is created in the website and the more traffic the site will get, leading to increased bookings.

This website demonstrates how you can turn the often tricky task of becoming carbon neutral to your advantage.

To discuss innovative solutions for your website, feel free to talk to our Hotel Team

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.