With the rise of social media, travelers now have more ways than ever to find, share, and discuss information about their travel experiences. This means that hotels need to be more proactive than ever in reaching out to potential guests and convincing them that they should stay at your hotel rather than another one. But how can you do that? How can you entice travelers to book a room with you instead of another hotel? The answer is online booking tools. Making it easy for travelers to book directly through your website increases your conversion rate which leads to more reservations and ultimately more revenue. If you’re interested in learning about some of the best practices to increase online hotel booking, keep reading.
Build a Brand People Can Trust
Before you can expect someone to actually book with you, you have to build a brand that people can trust. This means that you need to have a clear vision and know exactly who your customers are. It’s also important to make sure that your website reflects this clear vision. Your website should have a consistent message and feel that’s authentic to your brand. Make sure your website is easy to navigate and well-organized so travelers can easily find the information they’re looking for and don’t feel overwhelmed by a bunch of confusing content. You also need to have a strong online reputation. If you have negative reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, and TripAdvisor, potential guests will see that and it will definitely affect your conversion rate. Make sure that your reviews are positive, and if there are any negative ones, try to work with those customers to resolve the situation.
Responsive Websites To Increase Online Hotel Booking
These days, most travelers are searching for hotels on their smartphones. In fact, nearly two-thirds of online hotel bookings are made via a mobile device. What this means is that if you’re not optimizing your website for mobile, you could be losing out on a ton of potential guests. After all, travelers might see your website and decide it’s too difficult to book a room with you. In this scenario, they might decide to book with a competitor instead. Fortunately, there are ways to make your website mobile-friendly. You can use a website builder like WIX that’s been optimized for mobile and has apps for both Android and iOS. If you currently have a website and are not sure if it’s optimized for mobile, you can use a tool like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to figure that out.
Amazing Photos of Your Hotel
If you’ve ever booked a hotel before you know that there are a number of factors you have to consider like location, price, and amenities. However, for many travelers, the most important factor is the hotel’s look and feel. After all, if you’re going on vacation, you want to stay at a beautiful place. Photos are what show travelers what your hotel looks like. You don’t want to just have a few photos of the lobby or the pool. You want photos of each individual room. This way, travelers can quickly and easily get an idea of what staying at your hotel is like. You can use tools like Wix Galleries or Scoop Shot to create an online photo gallery that you can embed on your website.
Easy Check-in and Check-out Processes
Make sure that your check-in and check-out processes are as easy as possible. You don’t want travelers to feel like they have to wait in line for hours just to get into their room. At the same time, you don’t want guests to feel like they have to rush out as soon as their reservation is over because the process for checking out is a nightmare. Easy check-in and check-out processes can be as simple as having staff waiting for guests at the front desk when they arrive so they don’t have to wait in line and providing guests with a check-out reminder before they even arrive. You can also experiment with things like facial recognition technology to make the check-in process even easier. Hotels in China are already using facial recognition to check guests in. A guest can simply walk into the lobby, walk up to a kiosk, and take a selfie. The facial recognition technology will then scan the guest’s face and automatically pull up their information including their reservation details.
Integrate Social Media and Online Hotel Booking Tools
Travelers are probably already browsing your social media accounts to get a better understanding of who you are as a brand. You can make it even easier for them to book with you by integrating booking tools like Booking.com and Airbnb into your social media accounts. For example, you can add a Booking.com button to your Facebook page so people can easily click and book their stay. You can also add a “Message us for special rates” button to your posts. This way, travelers can contact you through Facebook Messenger and request a special rate. You can also embed Airbnb’s Book a Room feature on your website so that once people are on your site they can start booking a room with Airbnb. You can do the same thing with TripAdvisor’s Connect with Us feature. TripAdvisor’s Book a Hotel feature lets you add your hotel to the TripAdvisor website and receive more bookings.
Increase Online Hotel Booking: Conclusion
Ultimately, there are a few key things you need to remember if you want to increase online hotel booking. First, your website needs to be responsive so that it’s easy to navigate and looks good on any device. Next, you need to have amazing photos of your hotel that show guests what staying at your hotel is like. Finally, you need to make it easy for people to check in and out of your hotel, as well as integrate booking tools like Booking.com and Airbnb into your social media accounts.
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