A well-designed website acts as the virtual shopfront for your hotel brand. When it’s done right, it entices and engages visitors, providing them with a great user experience that cements your brand in their memory.
But when it comes to the travel industry, competition is fierce. Your website is your chance to impress potential guests with beautiful imagery and captivating content, illustrating the uniqueness of your brand.
And while it can be tempting to look to online travel agents (OTAs) like Booking.com and Hotels.com to build your online presence, attracting those direct bookings will mean more revenue and will help you stand alone as a strong brand.
Want to know how to create a travel website for your inspirational escape? Here’s what you should include.
Homepage
Hotel website development starts with the homepage. This is the first place guests land, meaning your homepage needs to sell your brand through concise yet inspirational copy and striking images.
You’ll want to ensure that you choose the most relevant photos, perhaps even with a carousel that shows off all of your hotel’s best features. Make sure you get those glamorous photos of the pool, spa, golf course, or the fun and adventure of the kids' club.
For as smooth a user experience as possible, the homepage navigation should be clear, with menus clearly accessible. You can include hints and previews of content from other pages, such as the location or experiences, to entice the user to continue reading and exploring, but avoid making the homepage too cluttered.
Ikos provides a fabulous example of best practice, illustrating the importance of a hotel website. The destinations, offers, and resorts are signposted. There is a memorable logo, an impactful tagline and a clear call to action along with contact information.
Copy should be concise. Big chunks of writing can be daunting for audiences, so keep things to the point, with headings to break up short paragraphs. Also, most people now browse the internet on smartphones, so design with mobiles in mind.
About page
Depending on whether your website is for a single hotel or a larger brand, your About page will differ. What remains consistent for any About page is the elements that help a customer form an emotional connection with your brand.
This is your chance to share your values and brand story, your mission statement, and establish why your guests should choose your hotel. If you’re writing about a specific hotel, this is an opportunity to showcase its intriguing history and heritage.
Remember, this page may say it’s about you, but it’s actually about your guests. It’s about showing you understand what they want from your hotel brand and how you deliver it, whether that is a cosy experience, opulent luxury, family fun or a romantic retreat.
Experiences pages
Talking about the exciting benefits that your hotel offers is a great way to entice potential guests. Think about the in-house amenities you can promote, such as restaurants, bars and perhaps swimming pools, spas or gym facilities. Sell these features as an experience to be savoured, pairing evocative imagery with inspirational copy to complete the effect.
In the case of restaurants, consider a mix of photos for variety - close-ups of dishes, people enjoying meals or perhaps the chefs at work, as well as the traditional restaurant shot. Include information such as previews of the menu, opening hours and dress codes.
A spa page should invoke the serenity of a soothing treatment, so keep it minimalist with calming colours and a clean design. And make sure your language really conjures up that feeling of relaxation, tempting people to book.
Think beyond your hotel, too. You can talk about location-specific adventures and excursions your guests can enjoy, along with relevant information and some engaging text about the local area to inspire your audience. You don’t need to give everything away – just a flavour of the experiences to entice travellers to book with you and showcase the beauty of the location as well as the hotel itself.
Easy booking page
When it comes to securing bookings, many hotels rely on OTAs. However, they can charge anything between 10 and 30 per cent in commission fees. Booking directly through your website means not having to lean on OTAs - giving you a chance to offer a discount for booking direct, while still protecting your profits. But it also means providing a simple, streamlined booking system is essential.
If your hotel has a difficult booking process, your prospective guests are unlikely to persevere for too long. It’s far easier for them to simply turn their attention elsewhere.
A key part of hotel website development is security. Give your audience the peace of mind with secured payments, transparency of overprices, deposits and possibly even payment plans. It will encourage guests to book with you, rather than via a specialised booking website like Booking.com, where they might get distracted by a competing hotel.
You encourage users to create an account to book, but many will also appreciate the flexibility of being able to ‘continue as a guest’, hoping to avoid spam emails and the burden of another password to remember.
Special offers
There is a world of possibilities open to your hotel brand when it comes to special offers. You can tempt guests with straightforward discounts when booking for a week at a time, or offer value-added extras, which have a smaller impact on your bottom line, such as included excursions or free all-inclusive meals for the kids. These offers can be a great way to convince an indecisive customer to book with your hotel.
You can reward guests for loyalty too, by giving discounts if they return to the same resort the next year, or book with plenty of time ahead. And never underestimate the power of themed packages, whether it’s a Christmas city break, a romantic Valentine’s package or a special stay linked to an exhibition or event happening in your location.
One of the most recent hotel website development trends is to create one page to display these offers, allowing your guests to see all the potential ways they can save money while making the most of their trip. This is a clever strategy used by Marriott, which has an excellent special offers page.
Rooms page
Prospective guests are often curious about the rooms they’re booking and all the elements that make it a good choice. If the double room with a balcony has a great view, then show it. If the en suite bathrooms are equipped with luxurious spa amenities, showcase these benefits while evoking a spa-like sense of comfort and bliss.
Make sure that the copy on these pages is particularly informative, as it will serve to reassure guests and reduce further questions. The accessibility of the rooms is an important topic, whether your hotel has wheelchair-access lifts and accessible showers. If you have interconnected rooms in your hotel, then families will see this as a bonus for multi-generational trips. And more and more guess focus on size, too, especially in cities where space is at a premium.
Palladium Hotels is an expert when it comes to knowing how to create a travel website rooms page, with concise yet enticing room descriptions, a carousel of gorgeous imagery and well-designed symbols displaying key room features.
Blog and local guides
Maintaining a blog is crucial for SEO purposes. The ability to continually create new pages laden with fresh keywords will help keep your hotel website visible in search engine rankings and provide opportunities to find new niches to explore.
A blog will also help you build your brand personality and voice, as a valuable tool to connect with guests. There are plenty of potential topics to cover, and creating inspiring blog posts allows for great opportunities to recycle existing content in different formats in the future.
Think about local culture and cuisine, tips about your destination, any great local restaurants, day trip ideas and suggested itineraries. You could even host interviews with members of your team or experts on the local history or nature.
A great example of an effective travel blog is The Journey by Ritz Carlton. A blend of destination guides and inspirational travel stories, it evokes a sense of wanderlust in the reader and acts as an extension of the brand experience.
The shopfront for your hotel
It’s hard to overstate the importance of a hotel website. It’s your best opportunity to form that crucial emotional connection with prospective guests, demonstrating the array of facilities and amenities you offer and showcasing what makes a stay at your hotel an unmissable experience.
By including the right elements in a sleek and navigable design, you can convert clicks into loyal, returning guests. Some of the features above are already essential hotel website development trends, while others will help you stand out from the crowd.
If you need more guidance and expertise on how to create a travel website for your hotel, the team at Peregryn has worked with some of the world’s leading hotel and travel brands. Get in touch today and discover how we can provide the transformative copy and sleek website you need to inspire your audience.
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