Jeffrey V. Fallis 
Do you want to create a hotel website design that can help you increase direct bookings and revenue?
Travelers want a website that reflects their demands and expectations; if the website doesn’t engage them, they’re unlikely to book a room at your hotel. Today, having a strong, engaging and successfully integrated online footprint is the only way hotels can stay in business.
This article will help you understand the need for a hotel website design and how to create a hotel reservation website.
Why do you need to design and build a hotel reservation website?
Building a website for your hotel or property is important as it extends your reach online, enables direct hotel bookings, and increases hotel revenue. All of these factors are beneficial to your hotel.
However, just being visible online and providing relevant information about your hotel or property is not enough.
Here comes the design!
The design of hotel bookings is key to increasing SEO rankings and creating an impression on travelers.
To get more customers to book through your hotel’s website, follow these steps:
- To make your hotel more visible, you need to rank well on the search engine results pages.
- You need to visually impress and connect customers with your hotel’s website design.
- You should be able to provide and display important and relevant information to your potential customers in an easily accessible manner.
- You need to make it easier for travelers to book hotel rooms.
- You should use advertisements, discounts, and budget packages to attract potential guests.
- You need to display great visual content that is highly engaging and relevant to your hotel and location.
Unless you create and design a great and engaging website for your hotel, it can be difficult to implement all of these in a presentable and organized way.
When you create and design your hotel website using a website builder tool, you won’t have to worry about the end result. The technology will cover and take care of everything. State-of-the-art website builders are developed with best practices in mind, making it as easy as possible to increase traffic and convert visitors.
How to create a hotel reservation site?
Developing and designing a new website can be a daunting task for hoteliers. Before you begin, you should take a break and review your design needs, resources, and expertise.
When it comes to hotel website design, there are two main alternatives:
- Invest in an easy to use website builder.
- Invest in a web developer to develop a custom design from scratch.
Investing in a web developer can give hoteliers a stunning custom design. However, it can also be difficult for operators who are not familiar with web design.
Hiring a developer to design a web page from scratch will take a lot more time and cost more money over time than using a website builder. Additionally, future website updates and changes could be difficult, as the website developer hired must approve all changes.
On the other hand, investing in a hotel website builder will allow you to design a personalized website to suit your branding image. This option can save you a lot of money because you don’t have to pay every time you change a minor element of your website.
If you decide to go for this option, choose a website builder designed exclusively for hotels. It will have the features you need to increase direct bookings and your hotel’s revenue.
However, if you already have a website for your hotel, you will need to determine and recognize the necessary elements that are missing, and then consider redesigning your website. A call to action like a ‘Book Now’ button, a secure online payment system, or a handful of high quality SEO features could all be missing from your hotel website.
Tips for redesigning the hotel website
Here are five basic tips to get started with your hotel website redesign:
1. Check the image quality on your website
Adding beautiful and aesthetic images to your hotel website design is an important part of creating an impression on visitors. Add photos of the most interesting and unusual places in your hotel to captivate potential visitors. But make sure the quality of those pictures is good.
You can start by evaluating the quality of the existing photos on your website. It will help you determine what improvements you need to make to attract potential customers.
2. Browse the information available to your customers on your hotel website
Another deciding factor for your potential clients to book rooms with you directly through your website is the information you provide to them about your hotel and region.
The information and details that matter most about your hotel are:
- Hotel room rates
- Availability of hotel rooms
- Services
- Approvals
- Auxiliaries
- Contact details
- Your location
- Proximity to attractions
- Things to do
Most of this information is vital but basic.
Are you wondering how to make your hotel stand out?
Going a step further and providing a comprehensive overview of what is of interest in the surrounding area can help your hotel stand out from the crowd. Your hotel will take one step closer to the best hotel reservation site. Having detailed information about local attractions on your hotel’s website will help keep a potential visitor hooked longer.
3. Implement responsive mobile-friendly web design
Responsive design is a fundamental concept that you absolutely must implement. This is a web design technique that aims to create a visible and interactive interface that responds to the user’s preferred device.
It ensures that the user experience is seamless and that the functionality of the website can be seen and operated efficiently.
Note that your hotel’s website design for mobile hasn’t been responsively developed if visitors have to zoom in to click a button or link.
For the best user experience, prioritize your users’ needs, just as you would when they arrive at your hotel.
4. Easy direct bookings
You might have all the awesome elements for a stunning web experience, but the hotel’s website design is pretty much flawed if your potential visitors can’t make reservations.
It is essential to enable direct bookings by integrating an online hotel booking engine into your hotel’s website, such as the AxisRooms Booking Engine Tool. This helps ensure that your website converts website traffic into customers. Direct bookings increase your hotel’s revenue.
The first step is to make sure that your hotel’s website integrates seamlessly with an online booking engine. Even more vital is ensuring that your booking engine integrates with your branding and website design, convincing visitors that your website is secure.
5. Optimize your SEO
Want to know what makes a great hotel website?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the pinnacle of effective hotel website design, and attracting visitors through search engines should be a crucial aspect of your online marketing strategy.
Here are some SEO tips to get more direct bookings and ultimately increase your hotel’s revenue:
- Determine the best keywords for your hotel’s SEO.
- Write unique title tags and meta descriptions.
- Improve the loading time and responsiveness of your hotel website.
- Post high quality, keyword rich blogs about your hotel and location that are interesting and educational for visitors to read and learn.
- Improve your hotel guest experience by localizing hotel web pages.
Your next step
Partner with AxisRooms hotel revenue management system and booking engine to generate and manage your bookings efficiently and generate more revenue.
When travelers book directly with you, you can attract them using our booking engine by offering them exclusive deals and discounts. With our revenue management system, you can compare your prices to your competition and determine your hotel’s online rate parity.
Our revenue management system can also tell you where your hotel is in terms of ranking.
AxisRooms Editorial Office
AxisRooms, a provider of software suites for the hospitality industry, is committed to helping your business grow, not only with our industry-leading products and services, but also with the latest updates to the travel industry and the hotel industry. Do you have something to say ? Write to us at: [email protected]
