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Transcript

Introduction to hotel websites
 
Hello, everyone. Welcome back. This is episode two. My name is Matt, and I'm really excited that you've joined for this second episode as I'll talk through websites.
 
Hotel websites is one of the most critical things to think about when you have a sales and marketing strategy, and it is probably the most efficient source of business if you do this well.
 
Throughout my conversations in the last twelve years with hoteliers, I've always found this to be a difficult topic or sometimes an uncomfortable topic because hoteliers aren't always that well versed in talking about their digital strategy. So I just wanted to share some of the learnings that I've learned in the last twelve years. And I'll talk through, first of all, building a web strategy. What is it?
 
How do you do it? Secondly, as you have a website, how do we drive traffic into that website? And then once the customers are in your shop, how do we get them to buy something? So how do we get them to drive a conversion?
 
And, hopefully, as you do a great job once the guest arrives to your hotel, you entice them to come back. How do we get them back in? Because a returning customer is the most affordable, most efficient channel that you could ever hope for. And hopefully, we can entice them to book direct every single time in the future as they come back to your hotel.
 
Let's get going.
 
Where do we start?
 
And, you know, twelve years ago, I left my career as a hotelier, and I worked for Hilton. So all of the web was taken care of, and I didn't have to worry about that. So as we started our business, we also realized that the one thing we were missing was a website.
 
And we've gone through a lot of iterations throughout the years. And through that, I've learned a tremendous amount of lessons. And at some point, I was so frustrated with the web developers because of the speed at which we were able to iterate our website then I decided to step in myself and just buy a templated website. So I've gone through iterations of having a custom designed website to buying a template to going back to custom and and then really building a full digital strategy. This is we found this very old version of our website, in the history of the Internet.

Chapter
Designing for conversion
 
And the first website we had, we had a, a graphic designer who wasn't a digital graphic designer. He was amazing with fonts and and paper designing. But we asked him to design our websites.
 
And we had one of our developers then code it. One of the challenges we found with with doing it that way where you just have this this really interesting website, like, you came in and you're like, oh, this is interesting.
 
But it wasn't built for conversion, and we didn't have conversion specialists in our business. So we saw some traffic form on the website, but they were lost with the navigation throughout our system, and they weren't booking demos, which is ultimately what we're looking for on on the website. We want people to see our system.
 
And another challenge that we found with having, one soft project for a website where you just pay, an agency a lump sum of money to build a website is that you can't maintain it yourself easily. And every time you want to update it, you had to go back to that agency and pay lots of money. So as our business changed and as our system changed, we wanted to have a voice. We wanted to have a blog.
 
We wanted to change some of the images. But every time we had to update it, we had to go back to this agency. And that turned out to be really painful and very costly. So at this point, I went on to a templated website.
 
So I just took some of the images that we had. I created a template website.
 
And at least it gave us freedom. The website wasn't pretty, but at least it was functional.
 
But over time, we started seeing that our brand just wasn't well represented because it was a template, and you lack the flexibility to modify it to our brand.
 
And then we went through a a first iteration with a different digital team, the yellow pieces, which was the old website for a couple of years ago, and we started seeing results. We started seeing that that started really yielding success. Then we had a brand agency come in and help us really define what our brand is. And a brand isn't just a logo.
 
It's everything. It's it's the visual identity, but also the the linguistic identity. Like, how do we talk? What's the tone of voice that we have?
 
And we started really building the muse brand and then translating that into a website that really worked and that was very visual that you could see, what we were doing. And the language was very consistent throughout. So why does a web presence for hotel matter? Because ultimately, you could probably run your hotel and fill it with your OTA business.

Chapter
Why you shouldn't rely on OTAs
 
You just work with the two biggest OTAs, online travel agents, and you fill the hotel. And, yes, you pay commission, but it's an effective strategy. So you could go and you can pay eighteen to twenty three percent commission. You could even increase the commission to get more business.
 
The biggest challenge with that is that you put your eggs into someone else's basket, and you are now fully dependent on that source of business. And if something goes wrong, if the algorithm of that OTA, messes up, you don't pay your invoice in time, and you're removed from that website or your ranking decreases, it could be very costly, long term thing to recover from. So, ultimately, I think that's really why you should have a web presence. It's it's one of the most efficient sources of business that you could have, but you definitely need a specialist team to run this.

Chapter
How customers discover you
 
So having a web presence is really critical, especially in discovery journey of your customers. Because whilst when you go to an OTA, you get you are only able to surface your images and some text, But you're not able to represent your brand truly about what you stand for, and that's where the website comes in because the OTA and Google is where people discover your hotel. And then as they do further discovery down the line, there's a high kind of, chance that they'll find your website if you have good searching search search engine optimization. And then once they come into the website, you're now competing for that booking with the OTAs.
 
And the best websites will convert you and drive you to close that deal directly with the hotel. But most customers who have booked on an online travel agent for, you know, a nice holiday will go to the hotel website. And you should not lose that customer once they've made it into your website.
 
So then there's the big question whether we should buy a template or whether we should just build this custom. We can either have an agency come in or we can hire an entire team. And that's a really hard question. There there isn't a perfect answer for because everyone is different.
 
If you're a small hotel with a very limited digital strategy budget, you might want to actually get a custom template.
 
When you use a custom template, you have limited flexibility because you get a template. So you can have a number of links. You will have a gallery. You'll have your, your rooms section.
 
You have some general photos, and you can maybe have a blog. And that's about it. And that makes it quite limiting. But for some hotels, that might just be fine.

Chapter
Tailoring your website to your hotel type
 
So if you're, you know, a budget hotel that just thrives off just converting for a really fast business, you might not need an extensive website. However, if you're a leisure hotel that wants to have guests truly experienced this brand, you might want to do something very different. So it very much depends on what you're looking for.
 
How do you go about setting a budget? A digital strategy about budgets.
 
A typical well performing hotel website for an independent brand will drive eight to twelve percent of total business coming from the website. This could be significantly higher if you're working with a a global brand. However, notes that you have to pay significant fees on that. So So if you're an independent brand and you say eight to twelve percent is what I wanna drive from the website, then look at your total revenue annually.
 
So how much money are you driving as a hotel? Take ten percent from that. So then that's the business that the website drives. And then you think, okay.
 
Let me take eighteen percent because that's the commission I would pay to a Booking.com, or an Expedia. Take that eighteen percent of the ten percent of the total business. That is your that should be your digital strategy, and and your budgets that you have. So that's the line item of the budgets.

Chapter
Calculating your website's revenue potential
 
And now you've got a number. And now you can actually look at that number. Is this sufficient to you know, if you're a small hotel to buy custom templates?
 
And that's the most affordable option, the template website.
 
If the number is bigger, you could look at okay. Is this a one off investments that I'm willing to make and then have a maintenance fee where I have an agency come in? Or do I actually want to hire people? So the not the the size of the number is really critical because it can tell you whether you can afford to hire one, two, or three employees that are specifically focused on driving the website.
 
So ultimately, it all starts with a piece of paper. You write down your revenue. You take the percentage that you want to drive from your website. You take a eighteen, twenty percent of that, which would represent kind of what an LCA would spend on driving traffic.
 
That's your number. Take that number and then break it down to what can I do for that money? And then that forms what your digital strategy is. And all three options are okay because all diff different businesses have different strategies.

Chapter
Finding the right partners for your website
 
So if you end up with a custom template, there are some really great partners. And in our marketplace, you can find different partners. We work with Cendyn who are a global player, and a smaller player, but they have beautiful websites. For example, LifeHouse. They are targeted on smaller independent hotels who have a very unique brand and their website really support those unique brands. And you can have this up and running within days if you want to.
 
If you are, however, going the route of either building a website or doing it yourself with a digital team, there are several things you you should think about. So first of all, it is important that you have defined what your brand is. So the website needs to make it very clear what you stand for. As people come into the website, they need to identify with the brand that you're you're you're driving.
 
An online journey of a customer is very visual. So they are looking to be inspired about the hotel experience that they're about to have. So you see some more luxury brands have video content, and video content doesn't cost that much money nowadays because we've got such great phones. You can get influencers to come and help out with that in sponsoring of of trips. But, I would definitely invest in highly visual content because it is absolutely driving the experience.
 
The website needs to be super easy to navigate, so don't get creative with different menu bars than others do because customers are going from often discovery stage. So they're going from booking dot com or from the OTAs into individual websites as they're evaluating multiple websites. If you make the navigation really hard, they are likely to leave you and go back to the OTA because they can just get more information there.

Chapter
Mobile optimization for bookings
 
Mobile optimization is really critical because a lot of your customers and a lot of the bookings that we're seeing coming in is app actually happening on mobile devices. So make sure that that website is truly mobile optimized, that it works, that you can complete bookings end to end. Loading times matter because people don't have time. They might not be on stable connections. So a fast loading time is worth the investment. I know it's not easy to always achieve.
 
And make sure that you have really searchable content. So the way that Google, works is that it looks for contents that people spend time reading and engaging with. And it's the same with chat g p t. So a lot of people are turning to chat g p t, but it's only living off content of one, what's on the websites of hotels, but also what our guests saying in guest reviews about your hotel.
 
And you need to drive that conversation. Like, if you want to drive that you are a doctor friendly hotel, for example, make sure that you, write that on the website, that you clearly mark this, that you, have customers who have dogs at the hotel who have great experience write about it publicly, so that that content surfaces and that people can find you for the specific niche that you're in, because it is important to find your niche because that's what driving a lot of the direct traffic.
 
And also make sure that you have a social campaign strategy. So what are you doing on which social platform, and how do you drive it from that social platform into the website? Because on the website is where you drive the conversion. So these are kind of the the the elements to a successful digital strategy.

Chapter
Understanding SEO practices
 
As we go through some of the the the rest of this, I'll talk and use some of the verbiage. I wanna make sure that you understand the the words that I use. So search engine optimization, is is really critical, and it's a set of practices designed to improve your ranking on these search engines.
 
And it's very much driven on contents, driving content, having other websites refer back to your website because you have so much information on there. And search engine optimization is absolutely critical to getting traffic into the website because as people type, whatever, romantic hotels in Berlin that allow for pets. You should be surfacing through the contents or through what people are saying about your website to the top spots on book on on the OTA, making sure that you always surface.
 
Brand awareness is really critical. So what is your brand? And how recognizable is that brand?
 
And and it is a really critical component to building the website.
 
You wanna control the message. Right? So you want to be very clear what your brand stands for and how do you, make sure that that is then translated into the actual experience that guests are having and talking about in online reviews through your website. So making sure that you don't overpromise on the website.
 
The truth matters. Like, it matters that what you say on the website is actually what people experience once they come on-site. Because if it isn't, that gap in experience will be talked about in the reviews. And those reviews are feeding back into chat g p t and large language models, and it it won't help drive conversion. So it is very important that you stay honest throughout that experience.
 
And then social presence is really critical. This next generation of travelers are no longer using Google and Bing to find, resorts. They are going into ChatGPT. They are going into TikTok to discover, different destinations.
 
And if you're uncomfortable with creating that content, work with content creators who are out there, who are very good at this. And you want to get on their radar because that is driving really instant traffic into your website that actually converts really, really well. And this is morphing very rapidly, and it is really good to be one of the first brands to get on the front front foot of that.

Chapter
Driving traffic to your website
 
Great. Part two.
 
Now that you've got a website, let's talk about how do we drive effective traffic inside your website through a funnel
 
and making sure that they actually end up booking.
 
What is the ultimate purpose of a website? And it's I've had many debates with customers about this because they're like, no. We need to provide information or we might want them to discover the spa. But ultimately, the most important thing to achieve on your website is to convert bookings. And it is really critical that everyone who works on this project is aware that the ultimate goal is to convert bookings. That's the most important thing that you can achieve.
 
And so wherever the user navigates, that book now button needs to be visible at every part of the journey, and that's a really critical component.
 
And as you create a really nice visualization, make sure that the book now button is always in a contrasting color. It needs to stand out. And whilst it may not be pretty, getting bookings isn't about the prettiest website. It is about the most effective website. And that book now button is the most priced little button that you have on the website and it needs to stand out.
 
So when you start to think about a website, you start at the top of the funnel. So it's it's like a funnel where you get traffic in. And the top of the funnel, people are just stumbling into your website. They have never experienced it. They don't know what to expect.
 
And you wanna make sure that as they come in, your page loads really fast, and that the first image is the most captivating image that really captures them. And I would love maybe a video even if you have a great video content of your hotel. It's a great way to capture the user very quickly as long as the video loads really fast.
 
And that way you capture them into the website and then you want them to start exploring. So you want easy links where they can explore the thing that they're interested in. I often go into a hotel website and I'm looking for whether they have a gym. And I struggle to always find this because the wellness link doesn't always lead there. So I go into the gallery, and the gallery sometimes is divided into sections. And then I end up leaving and go to booking dot com or Expedia because I just understand how those websites work and I can find that information really fast. So it is really important to think about what is a guest seeing when they come into the website.
 
Are they finding the information as fast as possible? Is the information different from what they've already experienced on Booking dot com or Expedia? And I think that's really critical. Make sure that whatever content you have on the website, it's more and better than what you see on the OTAs. So that drives much better engagements. And is that book now button visible and is it working?
 
So let's talk through the six stages of rising raising awareness.
 
So the first one is really as you start to build the website, you have to follow proper setup and SEO best practices. So at the core, the architecture of the website, you have to build it in a way that supports search engines finding your website. And this is a very unique practice, and there are very well documented strategies here that you can find online. But as you have a, company build it or if you have it yourself with your team, make sure that you question what the strategy is to make sure that there is a strategy because this is really critical in building the core infrastructure.
 
As you then have the core infrastructure in the right place, you have to decide what are the search words, the keywords that people are going to use to find my website.
 
And again, you can do a lot of research online, but you wanna make sure that as people type in search words that represent your brand, that your website is the first thing that surfaces. So if you are a leisure hotel with a beautiful spa and and wellness facilities, you wanna really describe that in the best way possible so that that surfaces. But if you're a meeting hotel and that's the core piece of business that you try and capture through the website, then your keywords will be extremely different and they are really, really critical.
 
Using metasearch channels. So I've always struggled in the beginning. I'm thinking what is metasearch? It's such a confusing thing.
 
Is you know, isn't there just OTAs that people find? But actually metasearch are aggregators. So as you go and book flights, you will find this aggregator website like a kayak, where they take information from all different websites that they aggregate so that you don't have to do the job of logging into every website to find the best price. So these metasearch channels are aggregators of finding the best deal for you.
 
And, you know, they're Google, Tripadvisor, Trivago, and you have to have a strategy for those because that's where the search journey starts. So as I go into Google and I type hotels Berlin, naturally, they'll start to service hotels. But if I search, for example, your hotel name specifically, you should come up very, very high up, but you should also have a link direct to make it bookable instantly and preferably that being your hotel website.
 
So fourth is con consider AdWord campaigns. So AdWords are the words that people are searching for on Google that then surface the different sponsored links on Google or on Bing.
 
And, you know, you have a this is a complex thing, and you wanna make sure that you have the right AdWords. Because if you, for example, are bidding on hotel Amsterdam, you're not you you might surface, but it's a very expensive ad work because a lot of people are bidding on Hotel Plus Amsterdam.
 
Whereas a lot less people will be bidding on dog friendly hotel with wellness in Amsterdam. For example, I'm just randomly saying some words, but it's a niche that people are searching for.
 
And, you know, maybe it's, hotels by the Vondelpark because people are looking for the south. And it's really important that you have a targeted strategy that isn't too generic because too generic means you're gonna spend a lot of money to get surfaced. There are very expensive clicks that you have to get. And often, you might want to use an agency who are specialized in this area.
 
The fifth element is really don't be afraid of o OTAs. They are a frenemy. So whilst we hate getting that commission invoice at the end of the month because it's punchy, they are really driving huge traffic into your website. So it's people start the discovery journey on the OTA website.
 
And then as they've discovered you, they find your websites, hopefully on Google through your great search engine optimization. It services your website and then they come in. But you need the OTAs. Right? Because a lot of people will start their search through the OTAs.
 
And then six, make sure you have better content than the OTAs. The OTAs are all about standardization, making sure that the right information is findable and and always serving that at the right place because people know how to filter through there. Whereas on your website, you should have more content and more unique content. The images that you have on the website should be different because then people see like, oh, the images are more interesting on the website and I can discover more about this hotel.
 
There's great video content than what I can find on the OTAs. Often, hotels will have better content on the OTA than their own website. So people are, you know, bored because they're like, well, I I can just find this information there. But if they leave you and they go to the OTA, that's where they're gonna book and that's gonna be an expensive booking coming in.

Chapter
Measuring website success
 
So let's talk about measuring success. So now that you've built the website, you've built the content, it's all about iterations. So you don't build a website and then back off for two years and just let it run. Like, this is an organism that needs to develop and you need to invest into it. So, and and and I strongly recommend you have a person, on staff that can do this or you have a retainer or an agency that is continuously every month going through the metrics. So you're looking at how much time are they spending on the website, the session duration. If people are coming in and they're leaving within ten seconds, the signs are there that your content is off or you're attracting the wrong customers onto the website.
 
How many views are like, how many visitors do you have on the website? And is that number growing or is it shrinking? What's the bounce rate? So are they coming in?
 
And within a second, they're leaving. So that means that you've got a problem. There's something off. Your your loading times might be off.
 
And it's a really, important metric to constantly improve on. The conversion rates. So do I get a visitor, and are they leaving me with a booking or not? And how much from viewers to booking that percentage has to improve over time, hopefully?
 
Are your people visiting mobile versus desktop, and are both of those working? And then lastly, the engagement rates. So are they reading the blogs? Is the content that you're creating really relevant?
 
And how much time are they spending on those pages? And what are the interesting bits? Like, where are they spending more time? So maybe we can do more of that content.
 
So these are kind of the six big things that I look at when I review our website and make sure that we constantly iterate on our strategies that this website gets better and better over time so that I drive more direct business.

Chapter
Optimizing direct bookings
 
So deriving direct bookings, this is the ultimate most important thing you can do on your website. So as you have a booking engine, make sure that that booking engine is properly loaded with the right images and and description. Because this is a thing that I often, run into where I see a hotel has done the bare minimum. They have literally just said double room. And the room description is a really important one. The room name is really important that it describes exactly what they're getting. The photos, making sure that you have multiple photos of each room category so that customers know what they're going to get.
 
The room descriptions. Like, don't just do English. Like, check where customers are booking from. And you can see, through your statistics in your PMS where customers are booking from, but not just through your website, but actually through the OTAs.
 
See you know, if if you get a lot of, I don't know, German customers booking on the OTA, but not on your website, potentially, you haven't done the proper translations and you will need to do the translations throughout. So I've been in hotel websites where the website was in German, but then I started the booking journey and they didn't have German because they didn't have the translations done. So the moment you've got them on the website, you've now sold them, they wanna book, but these customers might not speak English. And you've just lost them back to booking dot com where everything is done in their local language.
 
So make sure that that end to end journey is done according to the languages, the top five languages that you're seeing business from. And I they even go further than five because translations with in the time of large language models are so easy to do, and it's it's so cost efficient to do that I really think you should be looking at twenty, thirty different language translations.
 
Make sure that the booking engine has really clear availability, that you don't lose them with complex calendars where people don't know if you're available, not through the really complex restrictions. If there is a restriction, it needs to be transparent what's happening on that particular day. And, you know, customers are not always there to book a single room for a single person or a single room for for two people. They have like, we are complex.
 
We have families. We we travel in groups, etcetera. So make sure that the booking engine allows for those flows because the OTAs do. So if you're if if I come at my dog because I'm clearly, I have a dog.
 
I've been talking about my dog a lot throughout this video. But if I wanna come with my dog, is that catered through the booking engine? Or is there a note on the website that says, please contact us directly by email? And I'm like, no.
 
No. I'm gonna go to booking because I can just book it on Booking.com. So make sure that all of the different formations that your room cater to are bookable also on the website through the booking engine.
 
And then what are the reasons for people to book direct? So there's this debate often with whether you should have rate parity or whether you should offer a worse rate or a better rate. And it's this endless debate. But ultimately, if people have made it into your website, this is your own shop.
 
You should be able to offer special rates. But there are certain ways that you can continue having rate parity where you met have rate parity across the Internet so that you support the partners that that are serving you. But you can offer special things that they can't do. So you could include, a transfer if this is a three night plus stay, a transfer from the airport or for certain room types only. Making sure that you offer packages that are not available in OTAs, like including a co-working desk into a booking or a parking space. Those things you can't do on the OTA.
 
How can you enhance the stay? So offer products that you couldn't book on the OTA, but you can do on your booking engine. Special rates if they book direct. So having a wall where they need to log in and give their email address to sign up for their for your program where they get a ten percent discount is a great way to capture email addresses, especially if customers don't end up booking. They might have given you the email address to see the special rates, but you've now got their email address so you can start to target them directly for campaigns to to get them to come back to your website and book directly.
 
Offer late checkouts. Like a lot of customers, they are, you know, having a late flight. And if you offer late checkout on your website that you're not booking on the OTAs, it's a great way to book. And lastly, bar credits. People like to spend time at the hotel. If you can give them a free drink at the bar, the likelihood of them ordering a second or third beer is is very high. So you've already captured the booking, but you've also now got them to come to your bar.
 
So as you're thinking about conversion, think about the partners that you have. So on the metasearch, obviously, there's Google, Tripadvisor, and Trivago. And I think you should work with all of them. So you need to find really a partner that can make sure that you surface on all of them.
 
Maximize your reach. So finding out who is the central reservation system or the channel manager that I wanna work with. And, again, this is very dependent on local. So if I am a Dutch hotel, I am likely to work with a partner like a Cubilis that have every local online travel agency, listed, and that's why they are doing so well in the Dutch and Belgian markets.
 
But if I'm looking for strong exposure on the the the global distribution channels, then I might end up using a Synxis, for example.
 
And then there's these partners that are widgets and links inside your website to drive conversion. So, Triptease and Hotel Champ, they are helping convert customers from the website to say, hey. We've got a special offer. You know, leave us your email address, and we will, make give you a special offer. And they are really, really good at driving conversion, and I'd strongly recommend looking at partners like that.

Chapter
Key takeaways for effective websites
 
So what are the biggest takeaways from this class? So first of all, your website is a shop. The book now button needs to be visible everywhere you go in the website. And the website is your most important salesperson. This salesperson should be the most efficient way to attract business into your hotel.
 
Make sure that you always offer the best rates or the best package directly on your website and make it very clear that the customer has come to the right place because they've got the best offer. Make sure you offer the best content on your website. So the content has to be unique. Now make sure that you don't just use the same language that is used on OTAs. Make sure that you really talk to what the customers are looking for, and differentiate yourself from other websites.
 
It is really important that you capture the email address of the customer because through that, you can start to build a direct relationship with the guest because that is one of the most critical components, and really go through the booking process.
 
Friction is your enemy.
 
If you find any point of friction in the booking engine, and one of my pet peeves on a booking engine is when it asks me for my personal home address.
 
I'm like, you don't need that. You need my last name and you need my credit cards to just make a booking. At the point of booking, you do not need the home address of the guest. You may need it for a later bit, but initially you just care about converting that booking and dealing with the address details. You can do that once the booking is confirmed, but it is ultimately creating friction and friction is your enemy.
 
Making sure that you capture payments is really critical. That needs to be as smooth as possible on your website.
 
And then lastly, find a booking engine that supports your journey and that converts. Like, relentlessly look at the conversion numbers, track it, look at it every month, put it in a table where you can see month to month growth. Or if it doesn't well, you can see that digitally as well so that you can start to dig in what's happening and look at the guest data to show how you need to modify the the the website and drive more conversion.
 
That was my master class on websites. I hope you enjoyed this. I've obviously shared a lot of information. As always, you can reach me on LinkedIn. I'm very active there, so just drop me a message. I'm very excited to to hopefully have a lot of viewers go through this and ask lots of questions, but I hope that this helps in some way. Thank you.