The world of tourism and hospitality has seen some major changes over the past few decades. One of the biggest has been the shift towards online bookings. Just one generation ago, the majority of hotel, resort, tour, and other travel bookings were done over the phone, or even through mail-in or faxed forms. Now, by 2023, an estimated 700 million people will have made an online booking. As a Utah hospitality management company, we know that a great website can make or break your business. A great website makes it easy for guests to find you, shop for different room types, packages, or add-ons, and book their next vacation with ease. A bad website can stop guests from ever getting to experience your unique property.
Ready to start building a better hotel website? Keep reading to learn three things you need to know to get started. Then, check out Vibrant Management’s podcast, “How to Build a Hotel Website” to learn how to implement these tips.
1. Skip the Website Builder
Nowadays, anyone can build a website. Website builder sites like GoDaddy and Wix make it easy to build a site without needing coding experience. But before you start picking a standard template and customizing it with your hotel name and adding a link to your booking site, consider the consequences.
Website builders are designed with a single purpose; to make website building a breeze. They largely do so by offering users a set of pre-made templates. You choose a template, then customize the text, images, and sometimes the colors. But at the base, the coding of the website and the layout remain the same. While you might think that you’ve made your website your own, you’ve really only changed the face. Dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other websites could have the same look and similar code as yours. This can have a big impact on your SEO, or search engine optimization efforts. As a result, you may struggle to get your site to rank well for your chosen keywords. It also means that you can’t fully customize your new hotel website to make it your own.
2. Use Your Space Wisely
Using a website builder is the only big mistake that you might make when creating your hotel website. As a Utah hospitality management company, we know that competition in the industry is fierce. No matter how unique your property is, if you don’t give it a chance to stand out and shine, guests will never get the chance to experience it for themselves.
When building your website, it’s important to use your space wisely to showcase your property and its unique features. Research shows that the average time spent on a webpage is just 54 seconds. If you want potential guests to stick around long enough to explore all that your property has to offer—and make a booking—it’s important to capture their interest quickly.
Your website is your best salesman! Hotel video marketing, great images of your property, and other catchy features are great ways to help your salesman get a chance to pitch your property.
3. Make Sure Your Site Loads Quickly
A 2019 study found that almost 70 percent of consumers have chosen not to buy from a retailer because of slow speeds on their website. While you might not be selling clothes or technology, a slow-loading website could be enough to keep a potential guest from making a booking.
There are a variety of factors that can slow down your website. Sometimes it’s the website itself, and where it’s hosted. Other times, elements used on your site, like videos or high-resolution images, could be to blame.
Ensuring that your website loads quickly every time, on both desktops and mobile devices, is a must. Not sure how to do that? Our Utah hospitality management company can help with that.
How Our Utah Hospitality Management Company Can Help You Launch a Great Website
Whether you’re creating your very first website or looking to improve an existing one, our Utah hospitality management company can help. At Vibrant Management, we offer web development and design, SEO services, hotel video marketing, and more. We’ll help build your website from the ground up, and make sure that it showcases your property’s unique features. We also offer unlimited support, so you can make sure that your site loads quickly and is updated on schedule now and in the future.
Ready to learn more about building a great hotel website? Vibrant Management’s new podcast is a great spot to start! Our first episode, “How to Build a Hotel Website” expands on the tips we’ve listed here. These are just the first step; after listening to the podcast, contact us to learn more about how Vibrant Management can help your business.