You’ve spent precious time and resources building the best hotel website, yet you’re not seeing much of an improvement in converting those lookers into bookers? Your benchmarking insights show that your hotel’s website conversion is underperforming compared to the market, but you’re unsure how to act on it? In this article, you’ll find 3 effective strategies to increase your hotel’s website conversion and outperform the competition.
3 Quick-win Solutions That are Proven to Convert
The first step here is to identify why your visitors leave the website. The reasons can be wide-ranging, and each scenario requires a different solution to reach your strategic goals. Once these root causes have been identified, it will be much easier to effectively and efficiently act on the areas for improvement and achieve optimal results based on your revenue strategy.
Below are three powerful yet easy to implement tactics to combat your hotel’s website’s low conversion rate and make a stay at your hotel the most attractive out there. Incorporating these into your strategy will help nudge visitors down the booking funnel and boost your direct channel performance to match the visual value of your website.
1. Highlight the Benefits of Booking Direct
This may seem obvious, but are you sure you’re doing everything to convince users to book right then and there? It’s possible that your visitors aren’t quite ready to commit to a stay, and that’s okay, but why not offer them something in return for booking on the spot?
For example, an exclusive benefit or multiple little perks to give them that extra little nudge. But remember, for this, timing is everything! Make sure that the messaging of these direct booking offers is displayed right away as soon as they land on the site so that anyone and everyone that visits your site is aware of these special treats right from the get go.
2. Show Off your Positive Reviews
Another seemingly obvious strategy, but are you executing it in the right way? A low conversion rate could be partly because potential bookers aren’t sure if your hotel is the right fit for their stay. It’s common these days for travelers to look at various other sites to check ratings and reviews before deciding. How often have you searched for reviews to pick where to have lunch, let alone choose where to sleep! So why not display that information directly on your website?
Utilizing a Reviews Summary or other similar feature, show all of the information that users are looking for in one place. Has it connected with the major review sites to make it easy for bookers to see how great your property is? What’s more, you are curating a level of reassurance that will attract those direct bookers and keep them coming back.
3. Grow your Marketing Database
There will always be a high number of website visitors that aren’t ready to commit to a booking right away; it’s inevitable. A great way to take advantage of this high volume traffic is to capture their contact information for future planned marketing activities. With a tool such as THN’s Email Capture feature, you can easily collect the necessary details and use this as a strategy in combination with points one and two.
Emailing potential guests gentle reminders about special benefits or perks for booking directly, as well as highlighting some great reviews right in their inbox, is a straightforward way to increase exposure and make use of the site traffic that may have otherwise gone underutilized. Again, a highly effective yet often overlooked technique, with many added benefits that you can incorporate into other parts of your digital marketing strategy.
So here you have it, three simple yet powerful strategies that will elevate your online website experience and boost direct reservations simultaneously. When it comes down to it, it’s all about showing the right message to the right audience at the right time!
Free Checklist: The Ultimate Hotel Benchmarking Checklist
It is not always easy to understand your hotel’s direct channel performance. Even the most seasoned hotelier may be unclear about examining the findings to discover where to make changes appropriately. With the “The Ultimate Hotel Benchmarking Checklist”, you’ll learn how to step up your direct channel strategy by using data insights to take action where it most matters.
Click here to download the “The Ultimate Hotel Benchmarking Checklist”.
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