THE RESPONSIVE WEBSITE
When David Morris relaunched his B&B in Earlswood, Solihull, as the 18-bedroom Limes Country Lodge Hotel, he commissioned Umi Digital to set up a more responsive website linked to the chosen booking engine, Eviivo. But a website alone wasn’t
enough, as Harry Fielder, Umi’s business development manager, explains: “Hoteliers find that online stuff takes a back seat from the operational side, but if you don’t take control of the technology side, some 80%-90% of your sales will go through OTAs, which can charge you 15%-20% commission. More importantly, you won’t own the customer journey, so won’t control the customer experience.” So, every month, Umi
co-founder Steve Lowy provides a two-hour strategic support session. He says: “We look
through the analytics on social and web and at upcoming business requirements, such as conferences and Christmas parties. We run through the website, analysing content updates or need for further pages. We then have a broader chat about where offline
can help online and, ultimately, hit the KPIs they want to achieve.” Two months after the website launch, the Limes was seeing a 177% increase in bookings through content marketing. Fielder says: “Since then, we
have provided more products – for MAKE YOUR WEBSITE STICKY
of the hotel. Photo tweets are in the ascend- ancy, as are videos and YouTube films. This is where OTAs can’t compete. Going forward, hotels and restaurants that don’t have videos on their site won’t succeed as well.
Mobile matters
There are reportedly more smartphones in the world than people, so take heed. Beasley says: “Responsive websites are now essential. Your website needs to work across all plat- forms. More than 65% of people who book a hotel room do so from a mobile device, accord- ing to Expedia.” He adds that one in five of all travel book-
ings made online in Europe within a year will be made via a mobile device, with the UK the most device-happy country. “If you aren’t pro- viding the same experience to mobile users as to desktops, you could be losing out on a lot of revenue. We’ve seen average visits from mobile devices across our hotel clients shift from 5%-6% to more than 20% of total visits to their websites within three years,” he says. Mobile websites are similar to your main website, but simplified for use on small handheld devices and touchscreens. They can display text, data, images and video as well as mobile-specific features, such as click-to-call or location-based mapping. “A small operator just needs to be mobile- friendly without being too complex,” says Evans. “The important elements to include for mobile are the online booking button and hotel and contact details – information on local attractions, for instance, is not as crucial for a mobile site.”
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●Hotels can use an OTA ranking to learn how they are positioned and how they are converting.
●Copy the OTAs and give foreign currency rates so guests can see deals in their native currency.
●Turn your booking system into a sales tool. OTAs create urgency with messages such as “two people are looking at this room” or a “free cancellation” message.
●Search engine optimisation (SEO) is highly important for small hotels. Customers are already looking for a hotel in your location, so ensure you appear when they search on Google (see The Responsive Website panel above).
Evans suggests using Google Analytics to track how many of your guests are making bookings using smartphones and iPads ver- sus laptops and PCs – what they browse with and what they use to make their booking. “City centre hotels and restaurants tend to get more bookings via mobile than those in the country, so these businesses need to be found quickly and easily by mobile.”
●Draw up a marketing plan and update it regularly. Set a budget and evaluate it.
● Appoint someone responsible for the marketing to respond immediately to tweets and comments. They can’t be distracted by an operational role.
You can also capitalise on the fact your guests travel with their mobiles. When send- ing out confirmation emails, include a link to Google Maps and a quick-dial number to the hotel. That way, they won’t get lost and will start their visit upbeat. You can check how mobile-friendly your website is by taking the Google mobile check test at:
tinyurl.com/mob-friendliness.
Get ahead of the crowd Consider starting with a mobile website and then moving on to develop a mobile app to create more interactive, personalised mar- keting. Guests download apps onto a mobile device rather than view them in a browser, but you can interact with them before they arrive, during their stay and even after their departure to win long-term loyalty. Apps feed back data showing where and how guests are engaging in your hotel and what is proving popular, enabling you to tailor service to individuals. You can upsell rooms, offer restaurant discounts or fill unused spa or golf slots in real time. You can even reduce food wastage by flashing up menu specials of the day. Guests can use them to check in and check out, make housekeeping requests, order room service or valet parking, and make spa bookings, restaurant reservations and so on from wherever they are. Apps can also incorporate ‘triggers’, which help you to upsell without having to analyse pages of data. For instance, you could sched- ule a push reminder notification 20 minutes after a guest has viewed your spa section but not made a purchase.
Technology Prospectus 2016 | 19
instance, LiveChat, which is one of the fastest-growing ways that guests communicate with a hotel.” Google Analytics and search engine optimisation is important, too. Umi looks at the website content and meta descriptions to make sure they align and match the keywords. It also analyses social traffic and internal links to see whether there are ways to improve. One initiative is phonecall analytics – a cookie is embedded on the site and generates a new number depending on where the traffic has come from. Lowy says: “The system allows the hotel to generate numbers for paper adverts or online tactical ads so everyone can see a true return on investment. It also allows you to track the value of calls, as well as record calls for training purposes.”
www.limescountrylodge.co.uk
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