Hotel website design is one of the most subjective issues that hotel marketeers face. Here are some guidelines for briefing your hotel website designer.
The saying goes something like 'A fool and his money are soon parted...' and buying pay-per-click advertising without doing your math homework can quickly have hoteliers sharing the same fate.
There's a Fifth Element to building online revenues from your hotel web site, and without it you will never appear on page one of Google, Yahoo or MSN for the highest volume search terms...a Fifth you say? And the first Four Elements are?
I see all kinds of wild figures thrown around from 0.5% to 20.0% of site visitors that book then and there; this is broadly referred to as the conversion factor. I'm not going to tell you what it should be for your web site because I don't believe in it.
I've always wanted to write a headline like '10 Lessons Guaranteed to Improve... You see these all the time and they attract an incredible number of readers and eyeballs...but then I almost changed my mind. Usually, when you read through the article you discover that the 'lessons' are generally a sales blurb for the company.
I have a favourite analogy about hotels and how they should view their website and online marketing initiatives; it usually strikes a nerve pretty close to home...
