There’s no doubt that providing an easy to use, mobile friendly booking engine which streamlines the reservation process is an essential component of any property’s digital marketing campaign. But driving direct bookings goes far beyond integrating a reliable booking engine. It starts not with this final nudge, but with a string of other, just as crucial steps that get your guests on your website and inspire them to book once they land there.

Creating an Attractive, Easy to Use Website Is Key to Maximising Bookings

Your website is the most important tool you have to create trust in your brand, spark an impulse to buy and turn online travel planners into paying guests. It’s your opportunity to inform your guests about everything you have to offer, but even more importantly, to excite them, get them visualising their holidays and inspire them to book. How? Here are 6 crucial elements of a hotel website that converts:

• Easy to use navigation – A focus on usability and simplicity will ensure your guests find the information they need quickly and easily, moving them smoothly along the booking funnel
• An attractive, eye-catching design that reflects your brand and inspires trust
• Compelling calls to action – placing a prominent CTA on each page of your website will encourage users to sign up to your email list, interact with your property on social media, and book
• High quality photography – people planning their breaks online often decide whether they like your hotel at first glance. Capturing their attention with high resolution, enticing imagery as soon as they land on your site is one of the quickest ways to secure a booking
• Professional copywriting – the right text will powerfully sell the unique benefits of your property, engage your audience and persuade them to book
• Optimised for mobile – a website that looks great and works perfectly on all screen sizes will maximise conversions across devices

Driving a Steady Stream of Traffic to Your Website

An effective SEO campaign is essential if you want to drive a consistent flow of highly targeted traffic to your website and booking engine. By keeping up to date with Google’s increasingly intelligent algorithm changes and incorporating SEO best practices into every level of your website design, you can expect a more prominent organic ranking, increased conversions and better guest retention rates. The position your hotel is placed in the search engine results pages (SERPs) is integral to maximising your booking rates –as many as 70% of customers will not look beyond page one of search when researching businesses online.

As well as optimising your website’s text, image and design elements in line with the latest SEO strategies, marketers work to keep traffic flowing to a website by:

• Frequently adding fresh blogs, videos and other content
• Using social media to promote this content and drive traffic back to your website
• Using highly targeted email marketing campaigns to promote exclusive offers and boost website traffic

The importance of your reservations system

Your booking system has the very important role of merchandising your guest rooms at the point of sale. It should clearly lay out the information your guests need to make an informed booking decision, offer the flexibility and convenience to switch between room types and dates and draw attention to your hotel’s unique selling propositions. The whole process should be smooth and streamlined to avoid any risk of losing your guests’ business at the final hurdle.

But even with all these essential considerations in mind, your reservation system is just one element of an online campaign designed to drive conversions. Driving direct bookings is about powerfully marketing your rooms to the right audience at every stage of the marketing funnel, starting with a great website, and ending with a smooth booking process and engaging post-booking communication.

Combining the latest SEO techniques with a website that has been carefully created to drive conversions at every level of design is the most effective long term marketing strategy for hotels. By focusing on these two areas, you can expect to see increased exposure, better guest engagement and higher bookings rates.

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Poor usability doesn’t just confuse consumers, it makes them angry. And angry guests don’t make bookings. On a hotel or resort website, usability design is all about creating a clear, smooth booking path for your guests by removing any potential roadblocks that could prevent them from getting out their credit cards. We’ve compiled a list of the top 5 simple, but potentially fatal usability mistakes that could be harming your booking rates. Is your resort guilty of any of them?

1. You’re Making Things Too Complicated

The key to creating a great user experience for your guests is to keep your design clean and simple. Create an easy to use site by implementing a logical page design that is structured around headers, lists, and short paragraphs. Don’t opt for a Flash-based navigation system, insert too many navigation bars or crazy dropdown menus, or add unnecessary elements that serve no real purpose to your guests.

Instead, keep things consistent. Your navigation menus should appear in the same position on every page, your colour scheme should remain consistent from section to section and perhaps most importantly, your messaging should remain consistent to remind your visitor where they are and why (to book their next great holiday!)

Remember, if your visitors can’t find what they are looking for within a matter of seconds, they’re highly likely to click away elsewhere.

2. You Focused On Design, Not Purpose

As you know, your property’s website has one goal: to convert visitors into paying guests. If your website doesn’t do this, it has failed, no matter how flashy your design or how well-written your content.

Create a site that is useful to your audience by clearly understanding their needs. You might do this through:

• Keyword research
• Researching guest personae
• Analysing your most common guest queries
• Tracking movements and behaviours

The better you understand your audience, the better you can build a powerful, marketing driven website that’s perfectly tailored to their needs.

3. You’ve Neglected Your Content

You’ve probably grown sick of the expression ‘content is king’ by now, but although somewhat overused, the famous online adage is true. High quality, engaging and informative content is one of the most important differentiating factors between a good user experience and a poor one. Effective content should address and resolve the main pain-points of your target guests and clearly set out the benefits of choosing you over your competitors. Most importantly, it should convey a sense of experience and spark emotion in the reader, getting them excited to make a booking.

4. You Haven’t Included Clear Calls To Action

You want your visitors to book, so make it clear that’s what you want them to do by including prominent ‘Book Now’ buttons on every page of your site. Want them to share a blog post or subscribe to your email newsletter? Encourage and make it easy for them to do so.

Ensure everyone who visits your site – no matter which page they land on – understands its purpose and the steps they should take next to engage with your property further.

5. There's No Way To Get in Touch

Your guests are looking for a simple way to communicate with you and your team. Let them know that you want them to get in touch by including your phone number prominently on every page, by creating an online contact form and by providing links to your property’s main social media accounts to encourage them to engage with you further.

As you can see, creating an easy to use website that drives bookings is all about following a number of basic best practices that ensure a great user experience for your guests.

How well is your resort covering the basics?

YOTEL, a revolutionary hotel group that focuses in designing luxurious small-room airport hotels. Customers can choose between Premium (double), Twin (two large singles – bunk style) and Standard (large single). The cabins are with en-suite bathrooms, flat screen television that can be used to browse the web, watch Pay-per-View TV and order services, free WiFi and 24 hour in cabin service. 

The cleverly-designed cabins at YOTEL with a "techno wall" 

Recently, the hotelier had re-examined their check-in process and decided to automate it. YOTEL’s marketing director Jo Berrington said that the automation would speed-up the check-in process especially for people staying on short stays.  The automation has also benefited their customers with the ability to book in advance on their website. By entering the booking reference number the kiosk will issue their room key and WIFI code.  With this level of automation customers can easily check-out by simply walking out of the hotel as the payment processing is handled automatically behind the scenes. This way YOTEL can adjust conditions to accommodate guests’ individual preferences. Also, the room automation system would ensure the desired degree of comfort in each room and saves energy at the same time.  

Many hoteliers tend to think that the only time to demonstrate their hotel value to their guests is through actual face-to-face interaction. Conversely, the YOTEL management deemed that automation is a way that would make their staff more available for customers rather than a way to cut their staff.  Automated check-in, they say, is an easy process as staff can focus on arranging other add-in services such as bus transfers, how to get to the terminal, booking alarms and food and beverage orders, without getting in the way of customers who simply check-in to go straight to sleep. The system is configued to PDA, SMS and Pager systems that offers quick and effective hotel staff communications. 

Berrington further points out that since people are getting more use to the automation process with trains, airlines, and so on people are accustomed to it.  UK-based company – Shere Ltd., had created this innovative hotel automation and their portfolio includes designing, building, installing and maintaining of self service kiosk application for rail, food and beverage, cycle terminals in UK. The technology provides a more robust and simplified interface solution and makes the check-in process quicker and more interactive.

 Premier Inn is also piloting automatic check-in for their customers. 

Premier Inn and Travelodge are also running pilot schemes with the first 20 Premier Inns that are already operating the technology. For instance, the  highly-regarded Premier Inn County Hall hotel by the London Eye embrace this new technology.  Hotels can benefit from partial automation up to a fully automated service. So If these two accommodation giants decide to roll out automated check-in to all their numerous rooms, this could have a major influencing effect on the industry.  

Over the past few years, the online travel industry has immerged as one of the most popular and booming online industries. Search engines have readily become one of the first points of call for prospective travelers to research all their travel related queries.

In a recent article Jane Butler of Google alerted us to the most popular travel industry terms entered into search engines for 2010. Whilst most of the popular search terms are words such as ‘summer vacations’ and ‘all inclusive vacations’, the majority of users are simply looking for essentially one thing, the best deals and specials they can find online. 
 

The 2010 online trends indicate that there has been a general increase in the amount of online research engaged in by users prior to booking online. Studies suggest that the implementation of mobile internet through iPhones, android applications and smartphones, have fuelled this increase in searching online. Users are also booking closer to their travel dates than in previous years, which may also be attributed to the ease and accessibility of being able to access an online booking agent anywhere, anytime.

Another online travel trend that was apparent in Butler’s article was the increase in local point-of-interest-based search terms used by travelers. The increased illustrated that 70% of searches on Google contain a local component. Users have seemingly become more interested in searching for local information around a destination as opposed to merely the destination itself.

For the full article visit Travel Agent Central

ITA is a software company whose products are used to book online air fares and track seat availability and costs. Google plans to use ITA data to create “new flight search tools” to maximize the efficiency of Google’s existing search facilities. The new data will enhance Google Search to incorporate the ability to book flights, access real time prices and provide a comparison with other search engines.

The ITA software is set to put Google in direct competition with other online search engines that are entering the online travel market, such as Microsoft’s Bing. Bing currently was positioned as one of the number one online travel engines, offering a wide variety of travel information complete with comparison prices for the same flight from the different travel engines, as well as predictive charts and graphs from Farecast. Bing currently gets a lot of its flight and fare data from ITA.

Bing will not be the only company affected by the purchase of ITA. Online booking agent, Kayak allows users to search and compare flight, hotel room and other travel information with hundreds of other travel sites. Google’s use of the ITA software would render this online agent useless, or at best in stiff competition with the already successful Google brand.

There has been a lot of hype surrounding this deal, some fearing that this acquisition will finally place Google in the ultimate spot, giving them a monopoly of the online travel industry. Google, now equip with all the tools to offer instant fare information next to search results for flights and hotel price listings in Google Maps, online travel dominance for Google seems inevitable.

The full effects of this deal are yet to be seen, but as far as the online travel industry is concerned, it looks like it has a new ruler and Google its his name.
 

Bing Travel was successfully launched in US last year, providing services comparing prices on air fares, hotel rates and other travel needs.  The service also offers predictions of airfare and hotel rates based on the time of year travellers are wishing to book, and can inform them of the best times to get the best deals.

Microsoft is said to be conducting focus groups with customers to gauge the adaptability of its travel search engine for the UK market. Caroline Mastoras, travel category development manager for Microsoft, said “The UK travel market is very different to the US, so we are holding focus groups with customers to establish how it could work.”

Microsoft has always been in steady competition with Google, and as Mastoras hinted, Bing could afford to be more customer-led than revenue focused.
Although no date has been set for the Launch of Bing Travel UK, it is likely to appear within months rather than years in the UK market.

Microsoft gained the technology for Bing Travel after a $115 million acquisition of travel website Farecast last year. It has been rumoured that they might seek to find a similar deal with an existing UK provider.

With the ongoing technological struggle between the technology giants Google and Microsoft, it will be interesting to see who comes out on top, and what advancements can be made to the ever evolving online travel industry.
 

Ruba is a visual browsing device which allows users to travel through cities and their attractions around the world. The aim of Ruba is to ultimately improve the online travel research experience by creating a unique visual travel site.

This new partnership solidifies Google’s recent attempts to enter the travel industry. This move closely follows on from the recent Google Maps changes, integrating hotel links and room rates into the maps function, and the rumoured discussions to purchase fare shopping software company ITA.

The partnership between Google and Ruba began Monday the 24^th, which Ruba announced on their website in a letter to their “friends, fans, and Ruba community members”. The letter includes information as to the company’s physical movements into the Google Headquarters and a brief description of the project which they have been working on for the past 15 months.  

It looks like Google is determined to make its mark on the Travel Industry, and if this latest partnership is anything to judge by, Google will stop at nothing in order to successfully do this.  

Here at eTourism we pride ourselves on being innovative and technologically savvy. We are continuously updating our website and products to ensure we can offer the very best to all our clients. If you have visited eTourism Online recently you would have noticed a few changes, specifically in relation to our online booking engine interface.

The booking interfaces have recently undergone an extensive redesign. We wanted to ensure we incorporated the latest trends in booking interfaces, whilst making the booking engine easier to use than ever before.

What was involved in the redesign?

The re-design involved extensive market research, specifically on what the ‘typical’ person seeking to book an apartment / hotel wants. We listened to our customer feedback and trialled the latest booking technologies.

The main aim of the redesign was to not only update the interface to align it with the latest technology, but to also find a way to increase conversion rates. As a result, we have witnessed users become more trusting and eager to place bookings online with properties that utilise our new eTourism Online booking interfaces.

In our Beta testing phase of the redesign we found that we could improve online revenue for our clients based on the simplicity of our interfaces.

We have also redesigned specific features to assist customers when wanting to book more than just accommodation, by incorporating packages and add on’s to the reservation process.

What this means for eTourism online:

For clients who already use the eTourism online interfaces, the new look is immediately applied to your website (we are in the final stages of rolling out to all customers this week).

If you have not seen the new look here is a screen shot of the new interface:

The new booking interface is just the first of many developments eTourism Online plans on rolling out over the next year. We will be sure to keep you updated on the new developments, be sure to watch this space!

The Web has recently been bombarded with rumours surrounding the possible transaction between Google, Software Company ITA and their rumoured 1 billion dollar deal.  

 Relatively unknown until last week, ITA is a software company whose products are used to book online air fares and track seat availability and costs.

The importance of this type of deal to Google is enormous, evidenced in the price tag they are said to be willing to pay for an acquisition of ITA: asking price, approximately $1 billon. Not far behind the $1.65 billion the search giant paid for YouTube in 2006.

While ITA has kept a low profile amongst consumers, the company has reported to generate some 65% of online booking via different household company names such as , Fly.com, Hotwire, Orbitz, or TripAdvisor to name a few.

This take-over would see Google elevated to one of the leading players in the travel “meta search market” which according to recent online research, is rapidly becoming travellers’ preferred way to book tickets.

In addition to this, ITA software would allow Google to create a somewhat "monopoly" over the online industry, having itself (and its subsidiary companies and products) in every avenue of online travels.

The deal would give Google the tools to offer instant fare information next to search results for flights. With this development alongside the recently integrated hotel price listings in Google Maps, the efficiency and simplicity of using Google to book all your travel needs is almost too good to be true.

There has also been discussions around the potential of more advanced bookings being integrated into Google using ITA software. Such discussions include the ability to plan trips based around event listings in select cities, also utilising other Google Applications such as Google Calender. Such advanced choices for online travellers would give Google the chance to “provide richer information on departures for travellers through its portal and location-based offerings”.

There is yet to be any confirmation from either Google Inc. or ITA, however one thing is for sure. If this take-over goes ahead the online travel industry should prepare itself for some major developments. 

ITA makes sophisticated software for major online travel services such as Orbitz.com and Kayak.com and airlines such as Continental Airlines Inc. and Air Canada. The main use of ITA software is to help users find online flight information.

The rumoured transaction could see Google competing directly with travel-search features offered by Microsoft’s program, Bing. A take over of ITA by Google could see the travel industry taken to a whole new level.  

“Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information, and ITA does that for travel,” said Henry Harteveldt, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in San Francisco.

Neither Google nor ITA would comment on the rumours, however a report by Bloomberg News believe that ITA were seeking “around $1 billon” for an acquisition of their company.

President and Chief Executive of PhoCus Wright Inc., a global travel industry consulting group said, “ITA has a reputation as a company that is on a quest to solve some very big problems in the travel industry,’’ “ITA’s focus on cutting- edge technology would fit Google “like a glove. They are both search companies, after all.’’

The acquisition would see Google as the dominant player in the ever growing online travel business. With this possible new venture and the recent upgrade to Google Maps, Google Inc. is set to transform the way online travel bookings are viewed.