Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Hotel Websites - Tired vs Wired

From O'Rourke Hospitality ... with a great blog

>>>Are the websites that you analyized 'old world' or 'new world' ???

A Typical Hotel Website Today:

• designed to promote hotel with emphasis on beautiful photos
• difficult to navigate, too many options, user gets lost
• static, no fresh content supplied
• designed from a template
• no links to social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook
• no blog
• no video
• no division between types of travelers (i.e. leisure, business)
• no calls-to-action
• no incentive for user to supply e-mail
• no reason for user to visit your site again
• no personal profiling
• no personal communication with guest
• no reviews
• not optimized for the search engines
• no analytics in place

A Modern Hotel Website for 2010

• designed for the user with emphasis on supplying the information they need
• easy to navigate with no clutter
• dynamic with continually updated content
• created on a content management system that allows hotel to edit content themselves
• links to Twitter and Facebook (or place Twitter stream directly on site)
• a blog to supply useful content to users and help SEO efforts
• videos of hotel and city – videos should be authentic and not glitzy ads
• information should be organized by type of traveler and answer specific questions
• calls-to-action should lead user through the sales funnel
• offer an incentive for users to supply their e-mail (i.e. a downloadable city guide)
• give users a reason to re-visit your site (i.e. ski conditions if your hotel is in the mountains)
• maintain a database of your clients and learn their preferences. This allows for more targeted email campaigns, and a better guest experience at your hotel
• communicate with your guest before, during, and after their stay through email or Twitter
• request reviews from your guests and post them on your website
• make sure your website is optimized for the search engines
• install analytics which will allow you to track user behaviour

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