What are the main factors determining hotel website conversion rates? These factors fall into the business, revenue management, marketing and technology categories.

Business Factors:

• Who “owns” the property website? Who is held accountable for the results and production of the property website: bookings, referrals, RFPs and group bookings, social events leads, etc.? Whose compensation is directly affected by the website revenues?

Revenue Management Factors:

• Market parity: Are your rates comparable to your competition?

• Rate parity: Are the property rates in parity across all distribution channels, including OTAs? Does the hotel website have a Best Rate Guarantee and “Book with Confidence” message to reinforce the rate guarantee?

Marketing Factors:

• Enticing promotions: How enticing are the property special offers, packages, and promotions? Are promotions unique, seasonal, and outshining the competition?

• Credible content: The website content - both textual and visual - should be credible, mobile-friendly, engaging and unique, and of editorial-level quality.

Technology Factors:

• Quality of website design, technology and user experience (UX): The hotel website is 50% art and 50% science. Many hoteliers are obsessed with how beautiful their website is, completely ignoring the website UX, technology, functionality and content.

• Mobile-first website design+architecture: With over 65%-70% of website visitors now visiting the hotel website via mobile devices, a mobile-first website is a must. How old is the hotel website? If it is older than two years, it’s already due for a re-design.

• Website Download Speeds: Fast download speeds drastically improve the user experience and increase the user’s desire to transact on the site. According to Google, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than 2.5 seconds to load.

• Quality of the Booking Engibe: A weak booking engine with slow download speeds, and its lack of good product presentation and UX, hurts conversions and revenues.

• Website merchandising technology: Does the website CMS technology enable the property to sell rooms and generate leads on every page of the website via a complete ecosystem of modules, functionality, and capabilities?

• Reservation abandonment technology: Does your website feature reservation abandonment technology to win back users who start the booking process without completing it?

• Website Personalization: Does the website deliver personalized promotional, textual, and visual content dynamically tailored to each visitor?

Conclusion:

Developing a robust website conversion strategy should be a top priority for hoteliers in 2024. This is a crucial step for improving direct bookings and lowering distribution costs.

Any investment in your website conversion strategy will not only pay for itself, but will reward the hotel generously by improving the bottom line.

Max Starkov
Hospitality & Online Travel Tech Consultant & Strategist

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