Your luxury hotel website is the first point of contact between your potential guests and yourself.
NB: This is an article from ARO Digital
It is critically important that the experience your guests have on your website is fast, friction-free and appealing as it directly reflects upon the experience they will have at your property. It is also a key factor in a great book direct strategy.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and stay up to date
If a customer does not find your website easy to navigate and attractive, it is highly unlikely that they will want to book with your hotel or even go further than the landing page to research more about your hotel.
For over 20 years we have provided best-in-class Digital Marketing, Web Design and Internet Booking Engine services to 300 plus luxury hotel clients.
Here are the top 5 (of the many) ways we can help you improve your luxury hotel website presence
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS LISTINGS
Google My Business is a simple way to promote your hotel on Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
In the Knowledge Panel, it displays to your customers information on your business including contact details, location, directions, your website and even previous customer reviews.
When your customer searches for your hotel, it is important to make sure that your website uses relevant keywords and meta descriptions in order for it to show in a prominent position on the SERPs – ideally #1 position.
FOCUS ON YOUR KEYWORD RESEARCH
Keywords are literally the king of your content online.
Doing profound research on relevant keywords that your customers often search for on the search engines will prove to be highly beneficial for your ad copy online.
Your website content should be relevant to a user’s search so when Google crawls your website, it knows exactly what your content is about and ranks you on the first page at a prominent place in the SERPs.
You should never overstuff your content with keywords as this can flag your website as spam.
UPDATE YOUR WEBSITE
Google’s search bots crawl different pages on your website regularly to index any updates or new content that you have posted since the last time your website was crawled.
Hence, to maintain the quality of your website presence and your Search Engine Rankings, you should update the content on your website regularly with relevant keywords and topics that your guests are mostly searching for.
For example, Black Friday special offers should be updated on your website every year ahead of the holiday so when your guests search for deals around Black Friday, your hotel’s website is the one that populates for them.
WEBSITE INFRASTRUCTURE
A website for your hotel is like a foundation to a building.
It is essential to keep your website as up to date as possible, whether it is the content or the back end functions of the website.
Make sure that your hotel website’s booking engine integrates correctly with the other features of the website.
You should make sure to use the right resolution for images and videos uploaded on the website with thorough tests run on the load time as it is directly related to the online customer experience.
As a general rule of thumb your website should load in less than 3 seconds to keep your customers engaged on the website.
SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
Your social media pages should reflect the essence of your luxury hotel as they are generally an extension of your website.
Some hotels also prefer including user-generated content from their customers on the website to engage new clients with their brand and its story.
Post interactive content on your social media pages to keep your audience engaged with your brand. Be active in responding to users on your social media pages as this reflects positive customer experiences.
A hotel’s online website presence and optimisation is an ongoing process that must not be neglected.
You should consistently evaluate your website optimisation and SEO strategies to make sure that you still rank amongst the top hotels in your location and that your content is readily available for your customers as and when required.
