A website is said to be an essential asset for your hotel’s online web presence, whether it is big or small. It is the best way to represent your hotel’s offerings to your guests to increase your business credibility and attract new customers. You can even receive vital data for your hotel revenue growth from your guests’ feedback. If you plan to build hotel websites, you have to consider multiple factors that can establish your online presence, build credibility, and attract new customers.
Building a hotel website comprises gathering crucial information, planning a successful strategy, choosing the latest website design layout, writing effective and engaging content, testing, and regularly maintaining the website.
While creating a hotel website, you should have to consider some necessary things. Let’s explore each of them one by one.
Don’t Build the Website on Your Own
If you don’t have any knowledge or skill in creating a hotel website before, never try to do it alone, even if you can collaborate with other skilled persons. As your little mistake can also put your business at risk. In this situation, you don’t know what the future outcomes will be — either you win or lose.
A website is the only pinnacle component to present your hotel and its services precisely or to increase brand awareness over time and increase direct hotel bookings. Here, you can take the help of a developer friend, or there’s a company that builds hotel websites that can do the task for you.
Budget and Time to Build Hotel Website
These are the two building blocks you must consider while creating a hotel website: estimate your budget first and how small you want to spend. The other challenge that businesses are facing these days is not dedicating sufficient time to making it successful. The better way is to keep up the balance between the two and spend the money precisely in the right move at the right time.
Choose a Better Web Host
Here the question is — what is web host? A web host is either an internet service provider (ISP) or an organization that provides memory space on its server. You will require a sign-up for a web hosting service to publish your site online. Therefore, you need to select a particular domain name to publish your site over the web.
Finding an excellent web host can be complicated since there are too many available. However, the host you select should provide good technical support and guarantee little or no downtime.
Generally, you have to pay money concerning how much disk space and bandwidth your site will utilize. Hence it’s a better idea to estimate the site size and expected traffic before signing up for a web hosting service. You also want to look for some other aspects, such as fair pricing, reliable hardware, 24/7 local support, positive customer reviews, and so on.
Don’t Rely Entirely on Social Media
Social media is not enough way to expand your business; with a website, you can share more information with your customers. Social media is flexible and regularly changing with new posts, so it doesn’t let probable customers observe everything. Having a site permits them to visit the website and select what they would like to discover more.
When building a hotel website, it’s important not to rely entirely on social media for your online presence. While platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are powerful tools for engagement and advertising, they come with limitations that could impact your brand’s autonomy and customer reach. Here’s why diversifying your online strategy beyond social media is crucial:
- Ownership and Control: Unlike your hotel’s website, you don’t own your social media space. Changes in platform policies, algorithms, or features can drastically affect how and if you reach your audience. When you direct traffic to your own hotel website, you control the user experience and the content presented.
- Search Engine Visibility: A robust, well-optimized website improves your visibility in search engine results, reaching potential customers who are actively searching for accommodations. Relying on social media alone limits your reach primarily to those already familiar with your brand or through paid advertising.
- Data and Analytics: Owning a website allows you to collect and analyze detailed data on visitor behavior, preferences, and booking patterns. This data is crucial for making informed decisions about your business. Social media platforms provide analytics, but they are not as comprehensive or customizable as those you can gather from your own website.
- Brand Image and Credibility: A professional and user-friendly website enhances your brand’s credibility. Potential guests often perceive a well-designed website as a sign of a legitimate and trustworthy business, as opposed to solely having a social media presence.
- Direct Bookings: A website allows you to implement a direct booking system, which not only reduces dependency on third-party platforms but also increases profitability by avoiding their commissions. This direct relationship with customers can enhance guest satisfaction and loyalty.
- Customization and Features: Your website can be customized to reflect your brand’s identity and offer features that cater specifically to your audience’s needs, such as virtual tours, blogs, and guest reviews, which are limited on social media platforms.
- Stability and Longevity: Social media trends can be fickle, and platforms can lose popularity. A website remains a stable place where potential guests know they can always find you and access reliable information.
Having Good SEO
It includes all the tactics that you will require to make it simple for the audience to stumble upon your site. The purpose of a good SEO is to get a better ranking of a site in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). To achieve this goal, your SEO strategy may require to comprise extremely complex and engaging activities, or you might keep a distance by only performing the SEO basics.
The overall success depends very much on your target keywords and the level of rivalry it faces. A basic SEO for your hotel website consists of actions like creating a business website with a high-quality blog and promoting quality content via the same social graph, i.e., infographics, videos, image quotes, or guest posts. The ranking factor also depends on how many quality links you get from other authority websites.
Since your website builds up authority, more people will desire to work with you, making it more comfortable for you to extend your business to a higher level.
Include Multiple Device Compatibility
You should choose a hotel website that is compatible with multiple devices and opens smoothly on every screen size, such as desktops, laptops, tablets, mobiles, iPhones, etc. This will allow you to showcase your products or services across a broader range of connectivity.
Nowadays, these devices have become a significant part of almost everyone’s life; even you can use most of them with ease on the go. Hence it might be a valuable aspect for your business regarding revenue as there will be more chances to reach your targeted customers.
Focus on Effective Security
The security of the site is a vital factor to consider, especially for e-commerce websites. When building a hotel website, you must focus on additional security measures to protect crucial customer information. Today, many sites are at risk of cyberattack due to ignorance and lack of regular maintenance, hackers, and threats from malware to viruses.
Adding SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates to your hotel website is necessary for security reasons. The green lock sign and HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) in the site address indicate the presence of an SSL certificate.
When creating a business website, it’s critical to analyze the security attributes incorporated in the site’s structure and design. Hence, your hotel also needs to accomplish regular security checks or can contact the service provider who offers this.
