Designing a Hotel Website that Luxury Guests Like to See
One of the major challenges for luxury hotels lies at the final stage of travel booking. People have an array of choices today when it comes to hotel booking. Amidst the noisy marketplaces of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), creating your own luxury hotel’s branded website seems like the only way out.
Depending on the influence level of the OTA, size of the hotel, and destination popularity, hotels are charged exorbitant commissions ranging from 10% to 30%. The more reach you want, the more commissions you have to pay on these platforms.
Why not spend those resources on designing and building your own website and your own brand?
Visual Communication through Experience Design
Great ideas need great representation. No matter how beautiful your luxury hotel looks, you will lose potential customers if the same isn’t true for your online presence.
Presenting your brand’s narrative through visual communication is important. This must be simple, intuitive, and engaging.
Designing a user experience for your hotel website is about creating a meaningful, easy-to-use interface coupled with your brand’s identity. All of this serves to make you stand out.
These unique, meaningful experiences are created when guests are able to find what they’re looking for. For instance, suppose your guests know your brand name already. They reach your website by directly typing in your domain name. Next, they wish to check the availability of rooms. Thus, placing your hotel booking engine on the homepage of your website makes it all the more easy and intuitive for them.
Must-Have Features
The second factor to consider while designing an experience is the usability of your hotel website. Ease of navigation is essential in delivering a smooth user experience:
1. Responsive Design
Responsiveness of design is about your hotel’s website interface across different devices. This is crucial since users are moving more towards mobile displays. Brands therefore need to adopt a mobile-first approach to designing websites and apps.
2. Live Rates and Availability
The strategy adopted by OTAs to compare and contrast prices of various hotels in the particular area can work for your hotel’s website as well. Here, you will be presenting the prices of the various categories of rooms in your hotel.
3. Booking CTA
A website page is not just an information display for your hotel but a platform where guests can interact with you. When potential guests visit your website, they should take some action related to your services and hotel. It is necessary to place call-to-action buttons and links on your luxury hotel website.
4. Fast Site Speed
If your website takes longer than three seconds to load, you could lose nearly half of your visitors [Source].
People want things fast. It has been proven that speed is not only a differentiator but a way to expand business. Google understands it. This is why since 2010, speed has been a factor in its ranking algorithm. In recent years, Google decided to split the search index into two: one for desktop and second for mobile, owing to the increase in the use of mobile devices to search, shop, and buy.
For every 100 millisecond decrease in load time, a study saw 1.1 % lift in conversions, which was an annual increase in revenue of more than $ 370,000.
5. Content Formats to Include
Hotel websites feature their property more than any other business. It is a mark of quality for guests when they get to explore the hotel even before visiting it. It is strongly recommended for hotel brands to include these content formats on their luxury hotel website:
i. Exclusive Videos
- 3D Virtual Tour of the Hotel
- Guest Testimonials
- Event Aftermovie
- Note from Leadership
- Employee Reviews
ii. Rich Photographs
- Property
- Room
- Interiors
- Activities
- Wellness
- Culture
- Dining
- Guests
- Employees
iii. Quality Blog
- Culture Talk
- Celebrity Interviews
- Destination
- Cuisine
- Travel Guide
The website plays a significant role in increasing your reach and maintaining guest satisfaction. Luxury brands with their own domain have an influential authority that appeals to customers and attracts them to your business.
Check out our upcoming blog on Curated Hotel Web Design Inspiration to see our handpicked list of website designs across the world.
Book a free session with SundayPyjamas to let us help you design your hotel website.
