If you own or run a hotel, bed & breakfast, or vacation rental property, you understand how important it is to have a website that not only shows your properties but also allows potential renters to book/reserve a unit and collect payments. If you want to establish a bed-and-breakfast hotel website, you have a few possibilities, but most of them are pretty pricey. You can employ a designer and coder to create a personalized website for you, but this would easily cost you thousands of dollars (and quickly). It will also cost you additional money if you wish to make any changes.
There are firms that charge a one-time setup fee ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars, followed by a monthly subscription to keep the website up and running.
However, with website builders like Strikingly, you can create your own hotel website for a low cost and in a short amount of time by dragging and dropping text, photographs, slideshows, contact forms, maps, and other elements into your site. Continue reading to learn how!
What to Think About When Developing Your Hotel's Website
There are various considerations to make when creating a luxury hotel website design:
1. Responsive Design
The days of hotels being able to get away with having a non-mobile-friendly website are long gone. Consumers are increasingly using many devices to study, plan, and book their journeys, according to studies. But, exactly, what does "responsive" design imply?
Responsive design is a web design method that adapts to the screen size or device being used to render the site in the best possible format.
Are you reading this article on your smartphone? The website's navigation has been compacted and hidden behind a basic menu folder at the top. Because the font size has been changed to fit the screen, you won't have to pinch and zoom in on the text.
What about on a computer? Hover your cursor over the left border of the screen. An arrow symbol will display on the screen. When you click and drag the browser to the right, the page content changes automatically to accommodate the new screen size. Isn't it cool? This is adaptable.
2. Amazing Photography
Any hotel website design should have high-quality photos. Customers want to know what they're paying for, plain and simple. Hotel photography is often a significant expenditure, but it is one of your most valuable marketing tools. Your photography will not only be used on your hotel's website; it will also be included in your sales brochures and social media strategy.
It doesn't hurt to go through your photographs again, whether you're opening a new hotel or just finished a remodel. To help you out, here's a quick shot list for hotel photography:
- The Front Exterior
- The Hotel Lobby
- The Rooms
- The Meetings
- The Weddings & Events
- The Dining
- The Spa
- The Pool
- The Other Amenities
More diversity is better for hotel photography. Guests want to imagine themselves at your establishment! Make sure your budget covers at least “hero” photos, but if possible, strive to capture more lifestyle and detail shots.
3. Speed
When it comes to high-quality photographs, if you allow them, they can really slow down your site. How many times have you visited a website that took a long time to load? Modern people have short attention spans. Make sure they don't have to wait!
The finest hotel website takes about 2-3 seconds to load. Limit the number of plugins and redirects to help speed things up. If you have videos on your site, consider hosting them elsewhere, such as on YouTube or Vimeo.
Make sure the photographs you post are compressed to their smallest possible size. Customers who book directly are discouraged by slow websites. It can also harm your search rankings, as Google penalizes slow-loading sites in its results.
4. Call To Action for Direct Booking
A friendly reminder: A hotel website's goal is to create direct bookings. Choose a safe, integrated booking engine that integrates with your PMS. The "Book Now" button should be available at all times while a consumer is browsing your website. Make it clear and use a contrasting color to make it stand out. You should also pick a hotel booking engine that integrates well with the rest of your site. Look for a tool that has a responsive, seamless design.
5. Lead Generation
While direct bookings are the primary goal of your hotel website, conversions do not stop there. What about group meetings and business? Weddings? Reservations at a restaurant? Your hotel's website should also generate leads for other revenue streams. Offering an attractive lead magnet is one of the most effective lead-generating strategies for hotels. Make sure that conference planners and potential wedding guests can find clear directions on your hotel's website. Your contact information should be prominently displayed in order to increase the number of leads you receive and the number of site visits you schedule.
6. Social Proof
Social proof is another major way hotels may improve the trustworthiness of their websites. In technical words, social proof is defined as "a psychological and social phenomenon in which people replicate the acts of others in order to engage in behavior in a particular context."
In basic English, social proof says that people are more likely to trust something if others endorse it. When researching a hotel, 96 percent of guests polled by TrustYou believe ratings are crucial. Therefore, real-life hotel guest testimonies are so powerful. Real reviews from reputable third-party sources like TripAdvisor and Google are displayed on the leading luxury hotel website design.
Social media can be used as social evidence. Consider including a stream of user-generated content (UGC) from social media sites such as Instagram or Facebook.
7. Use Only the Most Valuable Information
The content on a hotel's website should be both useful and relevant. Contrary to popular belief, this does not imply that you need a landing page for every service you provide. Keep in mind that on an OTA, your luxury hotel website design only has one page.
What OTAs excel at is compressing all of a hotel's "useful and relevant" content. A general description, accommodation types with specifications, your reservation policies, and a bulleted list of amenities are all included in the property listing. That's the end of it.
With a hotel website, you have the potential to better sell your narrative. So stick to the essentials — but make them interesting!
8. Consider Including a Blog in Your Website
For hotels, blogging may be a very effective content marketing technique. Having a blog on your hotel's website allows you to offer more valuable content that will appeal to your ideal guests. Blogging is also beneficial to search engine optimization.
We recommend that luxury hotel website design use a blog to establish themselves as a go-to resource for their destination. Assist guests in discovering all the exciting things to do in your area, including where to eat and drink, how to travel there with children, and so on.
9. Analytics and Pixels
Don't forget about the bolts and nuts. On the back-end, every hotel website must have a few essential features. Access to significant information and better ad targeting is attainable thanks to analytics and tracking pixels. Both are less difficult to set up than you would believe.
Google Analytics is a free tool that may help you track the most critical indicators for your luxury hotel website design. To get started, simply register an account and copy/paste a single piece of code into the Header of your website.
Adding a Facebook pixel is done in the same way. You may create more powerful ad campaigns using a Facebook pixel on your hotel website. Users can be targeted based on their behaviors on your website, such as accessing specific pages, submitting an RFP, or abandoning a booking.
10. Search Engine Optimization
Whether you're using a simple website builder like Squarespace or a fully developed platform and unique design, search engine optimization should be incorporated. Look for boxes where you may enter a custom page URL, page title, meta description, and alt text for pictures. Yoast is a great SEO plug-in to use if your hotel website is based on WordPress. Yoast makes it simple to select a target keyword and advises you to include it in all the appropriate locations on the page.
Introducing Strikingly
Strikingly is a website builder that promotes a visually appealing, mobile-friendly design that may help you brand your business at a low cost. You can effortlessly construct a hotel website with Strikingly's themes. Strikingly offers a variety of well-designed and mobile-friendly layouts. You simply need to select a template and begin creating your restaurant website.
If you're still not pleased with the options, have a look at some of the best hotel web design built by other Strikingly users. You can learn how other people create websites and use that as a template for your hotel website.
Examples of the Best Hotel Web Design
A hotel or resort, like any other e-commerce business, needs a well-designed website to develop a brand and convert as many site visitors as possible into paying customers.
We've selected a few of the best luxury hotel website design and templates in this article, and we hope they'll inspire you.
∙ Whitefield Six
Image is taken from Whitefield Six
∙ Residencesanmichele
Image is taken from Residencesandmichele
∙ Chillout Hostels
Image is taken from Chillout Hostels
∙ Tignes
Image is taken from Tignes
∙ Cheval Collections
Image is taken from Cheval Collection
∙ HUUS Hotel
Image is taken from Huusgstaad
∙ Ca Beach Hotel
Image is taken from CA beach hotel
∙ High 1 Resort
Image is taken from High1
∙ Risveglio
Image is taken from Risveglio
Conclusion
For your customers to have a positive experience when exploring your hotel website, the web design must be straightforward and responsive. Aside from that, high-quality photographs and videos are required to capture the interest of visitors. Aside from that, set up a good booking engine to convert your potential clients into paying ones. Providing material in several languages allows your visitors to acquire information in their favorite language more readily. Finally, add a real-time live chat feature to your hotel's website to make it feel more human and save time for your guests.
If you don't already have a hotel website, get one before it goes online and incorporates the suggestions above. If none of the aforementioned features is present on your hotel's website, it's time to update it right now!
