A hotel website traffic is a good indicator to gauge a hotel’s direct booking performance. If you know how many people search for your website in a month, you can easily find out how it impacts your direct booking revenue.
If the number of searches is high but there are only little sales from your direct booking source, you would know that you need to do something about your website. There must be a reason why guests did not proceed to book your room from your website.
Nowadays, there are many online tools that you can use to find out your website traffic volume. Not just that, if you know how to check for website traffic, you can also check your competitors’ performance to gauge the level of exposure that the hotel is getting.
The more direct website traffic a hotel gets the more it clearly shows that the hotel marketing department is doing a great job.
As a hotelier, you need to set up social media accounts for your hotel. It doesn’t stop by only setting up social media accounts but you also need to be posting relevant content on your social media pages. Sharing relevant links and content on your social media will bring traffic to your hotel website which will result in direct room bookings of your hotel.
Usually, guests will use social media pages to leave their testimonials and reviews, which will produce a snowball effect. Other potential guests will book your establishment on your website depending on your guest's reviews.
Quality content is key if you want to drive traffic to your hotel website. This can be in the form of blog posts, articles, quality images, and videos. Search engines love quality content and they will reward any website with quality content by making sure they appear on the first page of their search engine any time guest makes any inquiry.
Also, travelers love quality content that is informative and helpful because it helps them to make good travel decisions. Good content will ensure that guests spend more time on your website, resulting in more room bookings.
As a hotelier, if you are really serious about driving traffic to your site you can’t neglect the power of search engine optimization. SEO is key in driving organic traffic to your website and it also determines the ranking of your website in search engines.
Start by choosing a good and easy-to-remember domain name, make sure you use quality images and videos on your website. Also, make sure that your website copy adheres to good SEO practices which include having original content on your website.
Good website providers will offer SEO-optimized websites. An optimized website ideally should come with a Content Management System which allows its users to update information directly to their website.
Never neglect the power of social proof. When we say social proof, we simply mean reviews and testimonials. Usually, when guests are not sure about your hotel, they turn to reviews to help them to decide. So, having good reviews about your hotel means more room booking for you.
Remember that almost 50% of travelers won’t book a hotel that doesn’t have a review and many travelers change their mind about a hotel based on the reviews they read. Always respond to your hotel reviews and make changes when necessary based on your guest reviews.
In conclusion, one of the most common mistakes that hoteliers do is making vital information about their hotel difficult to find on their hotel website. Don’t forget that you are competing with other hotels and guests won’t waste time on your hotel website searching for your booking information, contact information, room rates, hotel amenities, etc. When a guest can’t easily find the information he or she is looking for, the obvious action to take is to leave your website.