Unless their trip is very last minute, guests don’t think “hey, I want to travel” and head straight for your booking engine. The guest journey from inspiration to booking has multiple stages, and guests at every stage of that journey have specific needs. Your website has to address each of these needs to show that staying with you is the correct decision. Here’s how.
The Inspiration Stage
In the inspiration stage, potential guests are poking around to see what’s out there. Fifty-nine percent of vacationers don’t have a particular destination in mind when they begin looking or are choosing between multiple destinations. They’re open to persuasion and storytelling is crucial to convincing them.
SEO & Google Business Profile
If guests can’t find your website, you can’t use it to inspire them to book with you. Your website should be one of the first results that shows up on Google when someone types your city and hotel name. Revisit your SEO strategy if this isn’t the case.
Your Google Business Profile provides free links to your hotel website, so take advantage of these as well. It’s free, so what’s stopping you?
Strong Branding
Your website needs to stand out once guests have discovered it, so you should have a distinctive color palette, images, copy, and videos to reflect your brand and tell your story.
Keep your unique selling proposition in mind. What can guests get at your property that they can’t get anywhere else? If you’re stuck, re-reading reviews or asking other staff can help find out what your strengths are.
Your vibe matters as well. How will staying with you make your guests feel? Are you going for cool, classy, or cozy? Reflect this feeling in both text and visuals across your website.
Images & Video
Use images and video to draw the guest in and make them excited to explore further; think sweeping shots of your property and people enjoying it. Hire a professional photographer if you can. In the case of videos, choose short over long (people don’t have a lot of time these days) and consider creating a virtual reality tour.
Local Information
Guests don’t come to your property just to snooze on your king beds (unless this is a sleep tourism situation). They come to explore your area, so assure them it’s worth their time. Position yourself as the expert. They may click on your beach blog post and end up booking a stay. Blog posts and/or a “Things to Do” page are both effective ways to convey local information. Bonus—they boost your SEO!
The Research & Planning Stage
Travelers at this stage look for practical information to narrow down their choice. They have questions like: What is your pricing? What amenities do you have? How close are you to town / public transport?
You have to answer those questions so that they’re confident making a decision and moving into the booking phase. This stage isn’t about dreaming; it’s about checking that they can make those dreams happen.
Mobile-friendly Website
Seventy percent of customers use their smartphone to conduct their research, so your website needs to be mobile-friendly to be effective at this stage (or any other stage). Use a responsive design that adapts to the device the viewer is using.
Usability
Navigation, load time, and responsive design (see above) all play a part in basic usability. If your website is hard to use, potential guests will abandon it. Have a friend or relative look at it for you. They don’t know in advance where the most important information is, and they can tell you if it’s difficult to find. Is your booking engine available on every page? Load time is critical. One in four viewers would leave a site if loading takes over four seconds.
Clear Pricing
Your rates, discounts, and promotions should be clear, easy to find, and up-to-date. Pricing should be attached to your booking engine (obviously), but what about drawing attention to that special Black Friday promo through a pop-up or a spot on your homepage? This is not information your guests should have to go on a scavenger hunt for.
Guests want to know more than just, “you can have X room for X dollars.” They want to know why they should pay X dollars. What makes your rooms worth the price? Have your amenities listed and easy to find. Tip: If you have ADA accessible rooms or amenities that make things easier for guests with disabilities, make sure to mention those.
Room Images
High-quality images of your rooms’ interiors are crucial at this stage to reassure guests that your suites are clean and comfortable. Strive to capture at least four distinct photos for every room type, showing various perspectives and featuring a photo specifically highlighting the bathroom, to showcase essential room attributes and the overall ambiance.
Social Proof
Guests look for social proof that your property is everything you claim. Why learn the hard way when someone else already did? Make it easy for them by putting the proof right on your website.
Accreditations, images (see above), and reviews are all forms of social proof. Include a widget that displays your current reviews to both reassure guests and keep them on your site; you don’t want them crawling back up the funnel.
FAQs
An FAQ page is a one-stop destination for finding answers to all the common questions your guests ask, including some that might not be covered in your general content, like what is your check-out time? What are your pool hours? Both guests and search engines find FAQs useful! And they help reduce the load on your customer service staff too.
The Booking Stage
This is the stage in which guests are finally ready to push the button and book, so make it as easy for them as possible. They’ve made their decision, and their decision is you (congratulations!). Now is the time to make sure they stick to it.
Visibility
Your booking engine should be unobtrusive, yet visible on every page, so include it in your header. Choose an accent color for your “book now” button that stands out while complementing your website design. Take a look at our recent design for Location 4 Saisons as an example. The simple, uncluttered look and feel makes that button easier to spot.
Mobile-friendly Booking Engine
Your website isn’t the only thing that needs to be mobile friendly. If a customer decides to make a booking while exploring your website on their phone, only to find your booking engine doesn’t load properly, they will definitely reconsider that decision.
Payment Options
Accept as many payment methods as possible to make things easier on your guests. Your booking engine should integrate with a secure payment gateway (emphasis on secure) so that guests can pay conveniently online.
Book-direct Incentives
Encourage guests to book direct to save on commission fees and build the guest relationship from the get-go. While you may not be able to display a lower price than OTAs, you can add more value. Offer a small perk such as free parking or a later checkout to those who book direct with you.
Your website receives potential guests at all stages of their journey, so you need to showcase a wide range of content and direct them where to next. An engaging, well-designed website, your unique story, clearly organized information, and an easy-to-use online booking engine are all key for guiding guests along the path to booking.