What does 2023 have in store for hotel website design trends? What we’re seeing is an evolution of past trends as certain technologies become more accessible, like virtual reality and chatbots. At the same time, there’s a focus on simplifying the guest experience. It’s exciting to see how each trend fits together to support one singular aim: a helpful and future-forward guest experience.
There are a lot of stylistic trends, such as trendy fonts and interactive widgets, but we’re honing in on the trends that will support the long-term functional evolution of your hotel website. Here are nine future-proof hotel website design trends for 2023:
- Sustainability
- Accessibility
- Simple, Clean Design
- Voice Search
- Website Personalization
- Chatbots
- Virtual Reality
- Mobile-first Design
- Ultra-fast Speed
1. Sustainability
Sustainability has been trending in the hospitality industry for a number of years now, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see it leading our hotel web design trends for 2023. Because it all happens in the cloud, it’s easy to forget that our online activities have an environmental impact. Every page view emits 1.76g of CO2, so if your website garners 10,000 page views a month, it emits 211 kg of CO2 each year. The more views, the more climate impact.
Green web hosting is one impactful way to reduce your website’s carbon emissions. Another way is to be mindful of your website design. The more bells and whistles, the more output that’s required. Therefore, site optimization and performance are also important. On the backend, ensure images are compressed and the code is clean.
Sustainable web design puts the planet and people first, and considers usability, intuitive design, useful content, and accessible navigation in order to provide a user experience that’s easy, helpful, and honest.
2. Accessibility
Accessibility in hotel web design fits with your sustainability efforts because the aim is to serve all your guests. As diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are coming into increasing focus, we will see this spill into website design as well. As a hotelier, you want to welcome all guests, but did you know that your website might have barriers to those with physical and cognitive disabilities?
Accessible web design considers user differences and creates sites that anyone can navigate, interact with, and understand by incorporating closed captions on videos, mouse and keyboard navigation, and image alt text for screen readers. Check out our blog for more specifics: Is Your Hotel Website Accessible to All?
3. Simple, Clean Design
Simple and cleanly designed hotel websites are still trending in 2023. Not only does simple design support sustainable and accessible website trends, but it’s also in response to a noisy world. Simple designs support hotels in creating a calming online experience—similar to how guests will feel when they get away from it all and enter your hotel.
Less is more! Simple and clean hotel web design incorporates the use of white space, consistent fonts and visual elements, and minimal use of text. Such a design can make navigation easier and move web visitors toward that booking button faster.
The Breezy Palms Resort website feels fresh—like a soft ocean breeze—with lots of white space that makes the images pop.
4. Voice Search
Voice search makes it onto our hotel web design trends list again this year. That’s no surprise with increasing reliance on voice assistants, from Apple Siri to Google Home to Amazon Echo. You can support voice search in two ways:
1) Make your content voice searchable with colloquial phrasing guests might use, such as headings in the form of a question.
2) Integrate voice search within your site with applications like Speechly to allow users to search room availability using their voice. This is still an emerging technology so watch this space!
Voice search supports your website’s accessibility and is already the way many guests navigate the web.
5. Website Personalization
Website personalization is an important trend that’s only going to become more essential. As you know from your in-person interactions, guests respond positively when they’re addressed by name or offered a perk that’s specific to them.
Personalization technology can carry this experience online as well—from a personalized online booking process to predictive personalization that leverages machine learning to automatically display hotel rooms and offers that are likely to appeal to specific customers.
6. Chatbots
Growing in popularity over the last few years, chatbots continue to trend in hotel web design. Chatbots rely on artificial intelligence to reply to customer queries, providing immediate answers and saving time for both guests and staff.
As chatbot technology evolves, machine learning will allow chatbots to use data to generate more proactive responses. For example, if a guest lands on your site by searching for romantic hotel packages, your chatbot could make appropriate room and add-on suggestions—supporting your personalization initiatives.
7. Virtual Reality
As the metaverse for hotels grows, so does the VR trend for hotel websites. Imagine walking around a hotel room and checking out the view before booking. That’s the experience you can expect with the future of VR. VR is even more helpful when it comes to hotel event planning, allowing event planners to not only visit facilities from afar, but potentially try out different room configurations and decorations.
Having VR on your hotel website is also a great way to encourage direct bookings. A quick search on Google for “virtual reality hotel tours” will show you some amazing examples of hotels that have already employed this technology.
8. Mobile-first Design
The majority of travelers are visiting hotel websites on their mobile device, so why are websites still designed for desktops? It’s not enough to just have a responsive website anymore. Optimizing and designing websites with a mobile-first mindset will be the primary concern for web designers in 2023.
How websites are displayed, perform, and navigate on mobile is also an SEO concern, since Google now ranks mobile-friendly sites more favorably! Simple, clear, and prominent CTAs are important, with “thumb-friendly” buttons and navigation.
9. Ultra-fast Speed
In 2023, it’s important that your hotel website is fast. And by fast, we mean really fast. Statistically, visitors will abandon websites that don’t load within three seconds. Not only that, but Google ranks faster websites higher.
Optimizing your website for speed happens largely on the backend through condensing image and video sizes, reducing redirects, cleaning up code, and deleting unnecessary plugins. Making your website faster also improves its efficiency, which will also support your sustainability efforts, as well as accessibility! It’s a win, win, win.
When it comes to hotel web design in 2023, prioritize elements that simplify and make your website easy to navigate, fast, and future proof. In other words, don’t get sidetracked by fancy bells and whistles! If you’re not sure how to get started or what to prioritize, get in touch with our friendly and experienced web design team for a no-obligation design quote for 2023.