Want a helping hand to get your hotel digital marketing strategy off the ground or check that your hotel is on the right track? You’ve come to the right place!  Today, the majority of travelers research and book their stay and accommodations online. So, be where your potential customers are looking for you to maximize your chances of gaining direct bookings. Building a solid marketing strategy is key to better market your rooms online.  Here, we detail for you our 5 essential tips to increase the visibility and revenue of your establishment in an efficient, transparent and cost effective way. A website to your image  In order for your website to reflect your image, you must conduct a market study to comprehend the visual identity of the sector and of your competitors.  Identify the channels you will favor and the visual identities of other brands that inspire you (not necessarily hotels). Then, define your target customers and buyer persona to build a brand image that also fits them.   Then, choose the three adjectives that best describe your hotel to draw the essence of your property. Based on the previous work, define your values and positioning, your expertise and your competitive differences if possible. All this constitutes the pillars of your hotel’s unique identity that will be reflected in your website.  In a third step, you must choose two to three colors maximum according to their symbolism (white for finesse, blue for serenity, etc.) and the emotions you want to convey. Proceed in the same way when choosing the typography. If you choose several, up to a maximum of three, think about their complementarity and visual harmony. Linear fonts give a modern image (e.g. Castelbrac hotel), serif fonts give a classic image (e.g. Les Vallons de Valrugues hotel).  Then, it’s time to choose the icons and pictograms, the campaign visuals (advertising banners, photos, etc.) and the logo with shapes that correspond to the brand image of your establishment. All these choices must be coherent, harmonious and follow the same reflection as a guideline, it is an important step, regardless of your typology (independent, chain or group).  Finally, these visual choices enlightened by your identity and the construction of your brand image in a thoughtful way will allow you to elaborate the graphic charter of your hotel and to make the necessary declinations by online and offline support, including your website.    Be visible on search engines Organic referencing or SEO SEO (Search Engine Optimization) corresponds to the techniques to improve the position of your website on the search engines results pages following the queries of Internet users. The goal is to appear on the first page displayed by search engines, like Google, when a traveler makes a search related to your hotel. You can optimize the organic referencing of your website, in particular thanks to its content and its technical settings.  SEO settings of your hotel website One of the most important parameters of your website is the SEO, so that your site always appears in the first position of the organic search results page on your hotel name. For this you need to perform the following actions:Setting up title tags and meta description tags: the title tag is the name you give to your web page (60 characters maximum). The meta description is the description of your pages, under the blue links of the results.Setting up pointing from the old domain name to the new website in order not to lose traffic and to keep your referencing on search engines. Choice of languages to be inserted to cover the maximum of markets in adequacy with your clientele to offer relevant contents to the search engines.URL translation: it is essential to translate and perform a 301 redirection of your website URLs in the main languages spoken by your (future) customers so that your hotel website will appear in the search results of the targeted markets with the reference language.Optimization of the content of your website  Your website must be regularly updated, both in terms of content and technical aspects. Here are 5 tips to optimize your marketing content strategy:Keywords and tags: use keywords and Hn title tags in the hierarchy of your content. Rich results: keep your hotel’s prices, availability and reviews up to date, especially on your Google Business Profile, to feed the “rich snippet” (additional information under the meta title / description of the result). Optimized images: use light and well renamed images, with alternative text. Backlinks (referral): hypertext links on anchors (or keywords) that you will have defined according to their relevance to your activity. Backlinks are present on third party sites, such as a partner, and refer to your site.  Structure: the structure of your site must be clear and well organized, so that search engine robots can easily understand the content of your pages. Paid referencing or SEA Search Engine Advertising (SEA), or paid referencing, consists in buying sponsored links on search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, with a keyword targeting. SEA campaigns, also called Google Ads, are adverts that precisely target Internet users based on several criteria (browsing history, location, device, demographic data, etc.).  For a hotel owner, these Google Ads type of campaigns are interesting because you will generate more qualified traffic on your website. In the end, this allows you to increase your direct sales. Types of SEA campaigns The advantage of a paid search campaign is the increase of the immediate visibility of your hotel on search engines. The SEA also allows you to get qualified traffic for your website and acquire new potential customers.  There are 3 types of campaigns with 3 distinct objectives: Brand protection: protects your brand name against those who bid on it, like competitors or OTAs. These campaigns have a high profitability because you capture highly qualified Internet users who are actively looking for your hotel. Generic: allows the acquisition of new customers by increasing the popularity of your hotel in your destination and/or your attributes. It is about bidding on broader keywords such as “Hotel Spa in Paris”. You will be able to appear at the top of the Google results, with travelers looking for their accommodation. Display advertising: banners that appear on selected sites or partner sites of the search engine. Display campaigns can be used for remarketing or to develop the reputation of your hotel.The functioning and types of bids in search ads  To appear in the form of an ad, you must choose the keywords for which you want to appear. Then, you have to create an ad, which the traveler sees once their search is done. It is possible that several companies are positioned on the same keyword. The ads will be classified according to several criteria, the user will see different ads. Google Ads works on a bidding system, we distinguish 2 major ones:The smart bidding strategies: The amount of the bids is chosen automatically by the algorithm according to signals emitted by the Internet user (geographical area, time of the request, browsing history, etc.). Manual bidding strategies: Bids that you define entirely yourself. You get more granularity but these bids are less personalized to the user.Google advises the use of smart bids in order to offer your ad at the best time to the user.   Download our guide This was an excerpt of our guide: learn how to leverage hotel digital marketing, crucial to increase your property’s direct bookings:Get a website to your image Be visible on search engines Have an efficient hotel website Be present on metasearch  Track the performance of your websiteConclusion All in all, with these 5 hotel digital marketing tips, you are ready to build or adjust your marketing strategy according to your hotel and your online revenue goals.  A clear and consistent brand identity, a site designed to generate bookings, an effective SEO strategy and a presence on metasearch are the main keys to your online direct marketing success.  Once this winning combination is in place, monitoring your results will allow you to maintain your revenue performance and in the medium and long term, increase your direct bookings.  WIHP can support you in setting up your digital marketing tools and increasing your direct revenue: contact us!  

Today’s consumers are faced with an ever-increasing choice of hotel offerings. A simple Google search brings them a quantity of results from which your hotel must stand out to attract their attention. In order to remain competitive with this multiplication of offers on the Internet, the American giant Google is constantly offering its users solutions to help them access information.   This is the purpose of your Google Business Profile (ex Google my Business). It is the digital profile of your property. It is a summary of your establishment, allowing travelers to have access to essential information about your hotel: Physical address, phone, website, photos, comments, room rates, available services, etc. … All attributes that will allow you to communicate to Internet users the maximum information. Having a Google Business Profile as complete as possible can attract up to 38% more tourists than a listing without a GBP. It is therefore safe to say that this profile is not to be neglected!   The stakes of the Google Business Profile  Investing time in your Google Business Profile can only serve you in the long run. With a business profile, your hotel will be visible and accessible with a single click.  By offering a more immersive and direct view of your property’s attributes and qualities, your chances of reaching new potential customers increase significantly! This immersive view made available to users can also engage consumers and build loyalty: ratings, comments, photos… a multitude of elements that reinforce the customer confidence in your hotel.  In addition to this, your Google Business Profile will allow you to track your potential guests more easily.  The creation of a listing will greatly improve the local referencing of your establishment. When a user searches for a city or a destination, the Google Business Profile is highlighted by Google, in addition to appearing automatically on Google Maps. Thus, optimizing your Google Business Profile should be part of your marketing strategy to improve your organic referencing or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and thus attract new clients. Here are 10 tips to help you optimize your Google Business Profile to leverage its many advantages.   10 tips to optimize your Google Business Profile 1. Add the name of your hotel It may seem obvious, but the first thing to do on your Google listing is to add the name of your hotel. However, don’t be tempted to write keywords to improve your referencing because this practice is now sanctioned by Google! It is better to remain synthetic and only add a name that is 100% identical to your establishment’s name.  2. Don’t forget to add all your commercial information! The second thing to do is to add all the basic information about your establishment. Business Address, opening hours, phone number, description, services, live prices… The more complete the listing, the higher your chances to attract attention. A listing with a complete description on your Google Business Profile will get on average 7 times more clicks than an empty listing: optimize your chances with potential customers by showing them your key information! 3. Identify yourself with a specific business category Ask yourself what search you want to be found on. This will be determined in part by the categories you identify with in your Google Business Profile. By giving Google more information about your hotel, you increase your chances of having your GBP appear in searches related to your hotel’s features. The main business category, as a hotel, will logically be “hotel”. This way you will be eligible for Google Hotel Ads, which will naturally list you among the online hotel offers.  Then, you can also choose secondary categories that correspond to all the services you offer. A restaurant service in your hotel will then allow you to be listed in the “restaurant” category as well. However, be careful with the number of categories you select! More than 10 would risk losing the search engine and harm the clarity of your activity and therefore your ranking. 4. Add your hotel website To do this, simply click on the “Info” tab to add your website to your Google listing. This quick and easy maneuver will allow you to acquire more direct traffic to your hotel website, as well as give credibility to your page and your property. 5. Add a list of your additional services By making this list, you will inform the consumer, who can then learn more about your hotel.. Breakfast service, air conditioning, cleaning service, free wifi, etc. If these services match the travelers’ expectations, then the chances of them clicking on your link increase considerably. On average, 29% of customers are more likely to consider buying from establishments with a detailed profile, so don’t skimp on the details of your services! 6. Create an FAQ “Why choose us?” An FAQ is an opportunity to answer this question by responding to comments, questions and reviews left by customers on your Google listing. It’s also an opportunity for you to interact with them and build loyalty!  You can also look at the most frequently asked questions to your team to add them to the FAQ yourself and anticipate them. By being able to answer each question asked, you will be able to control your e-reputation better, essential in the hotel industry which is particularly competitive. 7. Illustrate your profile with high-quality photos In the age of social networking, photos speak louder than words. Travelers are more likely to click on images than text: 90% of consumers are more likely to visit a website page that features photos on the search engine results page. High-quality images not only showcase your products and services, but they are also more likely to arouse the visitor’s curiosity.It is important to use large images because Google will highlight them more, and to add or replace them regularly to stay relevant. So, don’t hesitate to call a professional photographer to do a photo shoot that will highlight your hotel and its rooms. 8. Add a cover image and a logo to enhance your brand image The first impression is often decisive: an attractive cover photo is therefore an important factor. This will be one of the first elements that will catch the traveler’s eye because of its size, larger than other images.  It is important to choose a cover photo that highlights your hotel and represents it in the best possible way. The logo is also an element that will allow your establishment to be easily identifiable, and thus show your brand image to the customer: the latter will then be more easily familiar with your brand. 9. Keep your customers updated with Google posts This option is not available for the “Hotel” category, but is definitely available for your secondary categories, like “Restaurant”. Posting is a great way to keep your customers informed about your activity: upcoming events, new services, or special offers.  Ask yourself what you want to highlight to your customers, then communicate that on your Google Business Profile. Adding more information to your profile can’t hurt, quite the contrary. 10. Improve your e-reputation with reviews Customer reviews are crucial in the decision-making process of your potential customers because they are among the most looked at criteria by Internet users in their search. By responding to them, your customers will feel taken seriously and valued, which may encourage them to use your services.  This contributes to customer loyalty and allows your profile to be active, which Google appreciates! You can also be proactive in acquiring online reviews, by asking for them verbally after the check out or by SMS. It is also relevant to sort customers leaving reviews according to several typical profiles (family, couple, single, business, etc.). This way, other people with similar profiles will be able to identify with them and will be more inclined to make a reservation with you. The opinion of peers should not be underestimated in the decision-making process of an individual!   Conclusion The Google Business Profile is a key asset to incorporate in your organic search strategy to increase your direct bookings. Simple to set up, it is still important to pay attention to the details in order to optimize its potential to the maximum and benefit from all the advantages it has to offer.  By keeping in mind these 10 tips, you will ensure a better referencing on Google, which means more visibility for your hotel and its website and therefore more direct bookings! Our hotel digital marketing specialists are here to help you in your digital marketing strategy, contact us!

In a previous article we gave you the 8 key performance indicators (KPI) to monitor the efficiency of your website. Here we give you other tools and KPIs to deepen the analysis of your hotel website’s performance.  Your website is the pillar of your online marketing and sales strategy, measuring its results is crucial to adjust your online sales strategy.  We detail for you the essential performance indicators (KPIs) to track and optimize your website and ultimately increase your online bookings.    Measure and analyze your web traffic Traffic acquisition channels Here we are talking about acquiring new visitors. There are 6 main online traffic acquisition channels that complement each other in a global marketing strategy and each have their advantages:Organic referencing: it is essential to have an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) optimized site so that it naturally rises to the top of the search results. The content and links of your website must meet the quality criteria used by search engines for referencing. It requires technical skills but it brings traffic in the long term. Digital advertising (metasearch, search ads, display ads, social ads): here we group together campaigns on metasearch, SEA (Search Engine Advertising) or paid referencing on search engines, social media ads and display ads, i.e. advertising banners present on Google’s partner sites. A fast and targeted way to reach qualified travelers, although it requires a good knowledge of advertising tools and strategies to get a good return on investment. Emailings and newsletters: they require tools and time but generally bring a good conversion rate. Very useful for the loyalty of your existing customers for example, to encourage them to return to your hotel. You can also automate some of these emailings to save time.  Campaign automation can both save you time and lower your customer acquisition costs. Referrals: they are all the sites/forums that talk about you. You can work on this by contacting sites or the hotel press, by collecting reviews and by taking care of your e-reputation. Direct: visitors who arrive on your site by entering your domain name in their browser or visitors whose origin cannot be tracked by Google. Social networks (organic): easy to set up, there is only a human cost related to the time spent creating regular content. The publication and animation of social networks require a real strategy to optimize the visibility of your hotel.Number of new sessions In Google Analytics (free analysis tool), you can observe the number of new sessions, i.e. first visits to your website by a new user. The percentage of new sessions is an estimate of the rate of first visits to your website.  Thus, you are able to see if you are attracting new visitors to your website. This allows you to know if your site is well ranked and visible on search engines. In addition, if you are running advertising campaigns, you will see if your site’s promotion is attracting new prospects.  However, the navigation of Internet users is cross-platform and complex. This is why it is difficult for Google to identify with precision if a user has already come to your site or not, so this indicator must be put into perspective. Origin of visitors, very useful for the hotel industry You can study the country of origin of the visitors to your site and thus draw conclusions about the most represented nationalities among your (potential) customers. This allows you to better know your target clientele and to translate your website into the corresponding languages.  Indeed, translating your website into several languages allows you to : Improve your organic referencing (SEO): you will be better referenced if your website is in the language of your clients. The language of the website is an important criterion, so by translating your website into Spanish, you maximize your chances of appearing in 1st position for all Internet users using a Spanish browser. Otherwise, OTAs or metasearch often occupy this position, even when the exact name of your establishment is typed. Get more visibility and more visitors ready to book on your website. Convert more travelers into customers: a hotel website gets +27% conversions when it is translated into the traveler’s native language. Travelers feel more comfortable booking a room on your site if it is written in their native language. OTAs are already using this good practice!The main advantage of speaking the language of your customers is that you increase your direct bookings in a simple and efficient way.   Track your bookings and salesTrack your performance according to search queries The “Performance” tab of Google Search Console and the related performance report on search results allow you to track several metrics of your hotel website. You can know the number of clicks, the total number of impressions, the average CTR or the average position in the SERPs (search engines results page). Other tabs allow you to know:the queries that generate the most traffic the most viewed pages the countries with the highest impression and click rates the types of devices most used to visit your site your appearance in search resultsThe Query Report in Search Console lists the Google search queries that generated impressions of your hotel website URLs in organic search results. This allows you to understand how users land on your website during their search and assess the relevance of your pages to those queries. With this data, you get insights on how to optimize your content for search engines. The number of impressions generated by each page on your site and the average impression position allow you to understand how well the search engine correlates your content with travelers’ searches. Clicks and click-through rate tell you if the search results are matching people’s intentions, and if so, they will click on your link. Assess the relevance of your content Number of page views per visit The number of page views per visit (or session) is the number of pages viewed by your website visitors from the moment they arrive on your site until they leave. Note that if a visitor views the same page twice, two views are counted but only one “unique view” is counted.  According to a Little Data study from September 2022 in the travel industry, the average number of pages visited per session is 2.3. In the top 20% of sites, 3.4 pages are visited per session and up to 4.1 for 10% of them.   Technical KPIs Loading time The loading time of your website impacts the decision of the traveler to stay on it. Did you know that 40% of visitors leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load? It would be a shame to let your future guests make a reservation on your competitors’ websites or on the websites of reservation centers. That’s why you need to make sure that the loading time of your hotel website is as fast as possible for an optimal customer experience. The loading speed also impacts your organic referencing. Search engines use this criteria to rank your website. If your loading time is not fast enough, you risk losing places in organic referencing. This means that your site will be less visible to users performing a search.  Have an adaptive website Since 2017, mobile searches have surpassed desktop searches. They now account for 65% of search engine traffic.   Using mobile as a source for accessing information has become increasingly common. This is why having a hotel website adapted to mobile browsing is essential to ensure a smooth customer journey. Nowadays, mobile-first websites are prioritized. An adaptive web design allows the creation of hotel websites that adapt to any type of device: computer, laptop, tablet or mobile. Unlike a responsive design, the user consults the content of your website with a perfect visual comfort. This type of solution also allows you to gain performance, and you also accelerate the path to your booking engine.Avoiding 404 errors Pages not found with 404 errors have a negative effect on the user experience as well as on the SEO of your website. It will be perceived as poorly maintained by search engines and will therefore be less well referenced on the SERP. It is therefore essential to avoid 404 errors or at least to correct them. Here are the main causes and their solutions:The deletion of a page: correct the links that point to it and/or set up a permanent 301 or temporary 302 redirection.  A redirection error or a typing error in the URL: it can occur during the redesign and/or the conception of the website. Once identified, you just need to correct it. A broken backlink: because the page targeted by it has been deleted without being replaced by another page with an identical URL or corrected via a 301 or 302 redirect.  Maintenance pages without a temporary 302 redirect to avoid a 404 error, the time to perform some work on a website.This is a complex technical setup to do yourself but it is an interesting question to raise with your marketing or website creation agency.   Conclusion With these analysis tools, you will be able to thoroughly evaluate the performance of your hotel’s website. This facilitates your strategic decision making regarding the possible adjustment to be made according to the identified strengths and weaknesses of your website. Keep in mind that all these values work together and give you information that is most often correlated with each other. This allows you to better understand the overall results of your website and measure its effectiveness both quantitatively and qualitatively.  To learn more about increasing direct revenue and creating a successful hotel website, contact our hotel digital marketing experts.

As a hotel, it is crucial to be able to reach new potential customers to make sure you make yourself known in a competitive sector and increase your direct bookings. This is what Microsoft Advertising Lodging Solutions is helping you to achieve. Indeed, for the travel sector in 2022, Microsoft sees 28.2 billion monthly searches with 215 million unique monthly searchers. 49 million of desktop searchers are specific to Microsoft Advertising and are not reached on Google. Today, Microsoft Lodging Solutions, as part of Microsoft Advertising, consist of metasearch advertising that enables hoteliers to promote their property on Microsoft Bing search engine, as well as their direct rates to travelers searching for an accommodation. Let’s dive into Microsoft metasearch advertising, and how your property can benefit from it.   What is metasearch ? Metasearch, also called price comparison sites, are literally meta-search engines that compare the prices of a hotel posted on multiple websites. It makes a synthesis of the rates from different feeds online to propose to the traveler the best offer from several booking sites, according to the chosen hotel, the selected dates and the duration of their stay.Basically, metasearch allow travelers to compare the offers of different actors, put online for the same hotel. Thus, they can choose a hotel room while being sure to benefit from the best price available. Please note that metasearch engines are not to be confused with OTAs (Online Travel Agency) which offer travel or stay deals. The main OTAs competing with hotels are Booking.com and Expedia. Metasearch advertising is prominent in the travel and hospitality sector nowadays. They help you increase your visibility and direct revenue, but only if you leverage them strategically.   What are Microsoft Advertising Lodging Solutions?  Microsoft Lodging Solutions are targeted, and rich metsearch ads that combine strong intent matching with rich visuals and in-depth information. The goal is to prompt action within the traveler’s search experience, map experience and across multiple Microsoft properties.  Today, Microsoft Lodging Solutions harbor two main solutions available worldwide for hoteliers and hospitality industry parties: Hotel Price Ads, which is currently available in 155 markets (in January 2023). Property Promotion Ads which is currently available in 148 markets (in January 2023).What are Hotel Price Ads?  Hotel Price Ads are a metasearch solution that allows your hotel to appear on Microsoft Bing’s sponsored reservation module and include data on rates, hotel room inventory and availability. These rich, and contextually relevant ads appear on Bing Maps (multi-property), Bing search results page (single-property) and Microsoft Bing Travel. The latter is a new consumer experience, recently launched by Microsoft to ease the customer’s journey when looking for traveling options and accommodation.  Multi-property ads are triggered when a user shows interest in a certain area, destination. Whereas single property ads are triggered when a user has shown intent or expressed an interest in a hotel. Example of metasearch advertising on Microsoft Bing search results page (SERP):There is 1 bidding method: Cost per Click (CPC): you pay a specific amount every time a user clicks on your offer in the list of rates on the metasearch page to be redirected to your hotel website. In short, with CPC, each click generates a cost for your hotel and you only invest in the traffic that the metasearch ad brings you. The more you bid, the more your price offer will be displayed at the top of the list of proposals suggested to travelers.   What are Property Promotion Ads?  Microsoft Property Promotions Ads are exclusive premium offerings that enable you to reach travelers on different Microsoft channels including the top position on Microsoft Bing Maps, on the right rail on Microsoft Bing search results page, Microsoft Bing Images, Microsoft Bing Videos, and Microsoft Bing Travel. It is a curated experience, where advertisers are in control of the hotel property content to showcase, including property images, rates, room inventory and availability. These sponsored ads allow you to put your hotel at the top of the results when a traveler is searching for a hotel in a specific location or with certain amenities. For instance, if your property is located in Chicago, you can appear in the top position for Chicago hotel searches. The bidding model is CPC: as mentioned above, you get charged per click on the ad that sends the customer directly on your website. One of the key benefits, as well as increasing your popularity in your destination, is that this type of ad is exclusive: your website rate will be  shown exclusively, no other advertiser will be displayed. It means that your hotel prices are not in competition with other advertisers. When a user clicks on your ad, only your official rates appear and not those of other distributors, which brings great visibility to your hotel.   Why two different ad formats?  Microsoft Lodging Solutions offer two different ad formats to enable you to be present throughout the customer decision journey: Property Promotion Ads is more “upper funnel”: i.e. when people start thinking of going on vacation at a specific location. These ads help you create awareness and inspiring brandness, helping travelers looking for a hotel at their destination.Hotel Price Ads is more “end of the funnel”: i.e when people are closer to making a booking decision. The goal is to drive consideration and engage ready-to-book travelers to make them book a room at your hotel.  How to launch Microsoft Lodging Solutions for my hotel? Essentially, what you need to implement Microsoft Hotel Price Ads for your hotel is your hotel feed, your hotel information and an ARI flow. You can give these elements to our teams and we will take care of the rest to set up your campaigns: easy as pie!  What are the bidding strategies available?  The recommended bidding strategy for Microsoft Lodging Solutions are the following: Cost per Click (CPC): more mature bidding method in terms of the algorithms that are running to have the optimal results. You have 2 options for CPC: Fixed bid per night: set a static dollar amount that you chose to bid. Percentage of room price: set a percentage based on your inventory as a bid.Bid multipliers: 7 bid multipliers are available to offer more granularity to your bidding strategy. You can apply a bid multiplier to channels that work best for your activity, in line with the online goals you set for your hotel. It gives you more control and you can choose to bid more based on a device type, a traveler’s country, etc. to take advantage of channels and criteria that work best for your campaigns. You can launch CPC campaigns on the markets you want thanks to our metasearch manager platform Meta I/O. You can easily manage your metasearch campaigns through a single environment.  Please note that, Microsoft Advertising also offers Pay per Stay but it is not recommended: this bidding model is more complicated and needs more involvement from the advertiser. Also, it is not as mature as a Cost Per Click  in terms of algorithms.What are Microsoft Advertising Lodging Solutions new upcoming features? Microsoft is launching Room Bundle: it provides rich details to users when they are about to book, when they have made their decision and have chosen the hotel they want to stay in. It will only be featured on Microsoft Bing Travel: you click on the hotel, then it helps you choose a room thanks to room bundle information (amenities, furniture, room price, square footage, etc).  Advertisers will be able to bid on Room Bundle based on their availability and travelers will be able to choose between different options from one or multiple advertisers. Microsoft will be piloting this new solution in the first quarter of 2023.   Conclusion Metasearch advertising improves your hotel’s bookings and gives more visibility to your official rates to help you convert more travelers into clients. Using metasearch offerings like Microsoft Hotel Price Ads contribute to the growth of your turnover.  When appearing on metasearch, you can greatly increase your traffic and your direct booking rate. With Microsoft Hotel Price Ads, once a traveler clicks on your rates on your metasearch page, they are instantly redirected to the booking page of your website.  You can now improve your visibility to ready-to-book travelers with Microsoft Hotel Price Ads and Property Promotion Ads. By redirecting these potential customers to your booking page, you will increase your direct revenue. Typically, users land on your website with a strong intention to book. Therefore, you will most often receive highly qualified leads.  We are here to help you set up efficient metasearch advertising strategies, get in touch with our team!

In the digital era where speed is the norm, it’s critical to the success of your establishment to provide users with a fast loading website. In a connected world and thanks to globalization, travelers from all over the world are likely to visit your website to learn more about your hotel, and make a direct booking. That’s why it’s important to have a fast-loading website, across all media (mobile and desktop) and around the world.  According to a Google study, 75% of users consider that the most important element of a website is its speed. More surprisingly, it is considered much more important than the attractiveness of the website. Making sure your website loads quickly is the cornerstone of all your direct digital distribution.    A fast hotel website prevents the loss of customersA study by Deloitte, a major consulting firm, confirms this finding. “Speed has a direct impact on the user experience. Speed plays a critical role in the success of any digital initiative and is prevalent on e-commerce and other transactional websites. 70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer and in the U.S., latency is the number one reason consumers decide to abandon mobile websites, with 10% blaming slow downloads as a reason not to buy.” A slow website makes you lose bookings  Did you know that 40% of visitors leave your website if your pages take longer than 3 seconds to load? In fact, if you have 10,000 unique monthly visitors and your website takes 4 seconds to load, you are losing 4,000 potential customers! A slow website encourages visitors to leave, but above all it makes you lose customers and therefore revenue. This is not a theory: Amazon calculated that a one-second drop in the loading speed of its platform would result in a loss of 1.6 billion dollars. But there are also long-term effects. Having a website that is too slow gradually hinders your natural growth. Fewer customers or prospects will want to book directly on your website if it doesn’t perform well enough.  The speed of your hotel website impacts its visibility Google is constantly seeking to improve the user experience of Internet users who use its search engine. Google regularly updates its algorithms to improve the relevance of the results provided. The loading speed of websites is a criteria taken into account by Google in its referencing of web pages, its representatives have clearly stated. Of course, it is only one of many criteria and a page that is very relevant on a topic but loads slowly will always be better ranked than a page that loads faster but whose content is not as relevant as the slower page. Nevertheless, speed is a strong argument when you want to gain new positions and you know the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for the visibility of a website.   How do I get a fast website for my hotel?There are many technical aspects of a website that need to be optimized to ensure a fast loading time. If any of these aspects is not properly optimized, your hotel website will load slowly.  Here are the technical optimizations we do at WIHP that you can implement to ensure that your hotel website is fast loading. Content Delivery Networks (CDN) CDN is a technology that uses servers located in different geographical areas around the world to ensure that websites load very quickly.  When a user visits your hotel’s website, the information from your website is sent from the closest servers. For example, if a user connects to your website from Germany, your website data is loaded from the server closest to that user. With a wide distribution network, you can guarantee the best possible loading time for all users who connect to your website.  At WIHP, we use AWS Amazon CloudFront, a global network of more than 225 points of presence around the world to reduce website loading latency.  A serverless connection Traditionally, web hosting is set up so that every time a user logs into a website, it connects to the server to load it. Once the server is connected, it will load the latest version of the website with any new changes made. The technology we use allows your website to load without latency thanks to the use of a server cache. The advantage of this cache is that it does not require you to connect to a server each time, which considerably speeds up the loading time of your website.  Please note that some websites still have trouble loading at optimal speed. The main cause of this problem is due to the presence of third-party scripts that can slow down the loading of a website considerably.  This is because you, or your website design agency, do not have control over this script and every load requires the user to connect to the third party server.   How can I make my hotel website faster? Hosting and media file optimization are two sources you can act on to increase the speed of your website. At WIHP, we use the Amazon Web Services hosting platform to keep your page load times to a minimum and ensure a fast hotel website worldwide. As far as visual content is concerned, images and videos are heavy files and consume a lot of server resources. This is why it is important to optimize their weight. There are 3 main techniques to reduce the weight of an image:Compress the image: with the ShrinkMe tool that we recommend. Easy to use, fast, 100% free and without premium limitations. Change its format: by converting your PNG images into JPEG and by limiting the use of GIF. Reduce its dimensions: the smaller the image, the fewer pixels it has, the less it weighs.These actions should preferably be performed before uploading the images to your website’s server, i.e. before adding them to the media library of your website.   Conclusion The loading speed of your hotel website is essential in your web project. It plays an essential role in the user experience of your future customers. Reducing your website loading time will allow you to provide a better service to your customers from the first interaction with your hotel. Thus, you improve the overall performance of your digital distribution and increase your online revenue.  At WIHP, we assist hotels in developing their website and implementing digital solutions to increase their direct bookings. We are here to help you, visit our website to discover our solutions or contact us.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the technique to improve the position of a website on the search engine results pages (SERP) following the requests of Internet users.It is about making sure to appear on the first page displayed by search engines, notably Google, when a user performs a search related to the hotel in question.SEO is essential in your overall SEM (Search Engine Marketing) strategy and is complemented by a SEA (Search Engine Advertising) strategy. In this article, we look at the different ways to optimize the organic referencing of your hotel website.   Essential actions to optimize the organic referencing (SEO) of your hotel websiteThere are different techniques to optimize the natural referencing of your website, especially in its content and its technical settings. It is also necessary to master Google’s algorithms which seek to filter the results in order to propose to the Internet users only the answers which it considers relevant. To help you figure this out, we give you several SEO tips that are easy to implement to improve your organic referencing.  SEO settings for your hotel website One of the most important settings for your website is the SEO setting. In order for your website to always appear in the first position of the search results page on your brand name. For this you need to realize the following actions:Setting up title tags and meta description tags. The title tag is the name you give to your web page. This must not contain more than 60 characters to allow Google to display the full title of your hotel web pages. The meta description is the description of your pages presented under the blue links of a results page. Setting up pointers from the old domain name to the new website in order not to lose traffic and to keep your ranking on search engines. For example, it helps keep traffic sent to your hotel website from external links such as travel blogs. Choosing foreign languages to be inserted to cover the maximum of markets in adequacy with the clientele to offer relevant content to the search engines. We will come back to this in a dedicated section further down in this article. Translating your URLs: it is also essential to translate and perform a 301 redirection of your website’s URLs in the main languages spoken by your (future) customers to ensure that your hotel’s website appears in the first positions of the search results pages of the targeted market.We recommend that you opt for a hosting service with a dedicated space to access the SQL manager (SQL language allows to define, manage and protect data in a simple and schematic way), used once the website is online.  SEO optimization of your website content Your website must also be frequently updated, both in terms of its content and its technical aspects. Here are four tips to optimize your content strategy :Keywords and tags: to optimize your content, use keywords and Hn title tags (set up beforehand) in the hierarchy of your content on your website. We will come back to the keyword strategy in the next part. Rich results: keep your hotel’s prices, availability and reviews up to date, especially on your Google Business Profile (previously named Google My Business), to feed the “rich snippet” (additional information that can appear in a search result under the meta title or the meta description). Optimized images: use SEO optimized images on your hotel website (light, with alternative text, well renamed). Backlinks: these are hyperlinks on anchors (or keywords) that you have defined according to their relevance to your business. Backlinks are present on third party websites and link back to your website. Ask your partners to place these backlinks on their website for example.Moreover, in order for the search engines’ robots to easily understand the content of your pages, and for them to bring it up in their referencing, it is essential that the structure of your website is clear and well organized.    How to Research Keywords for my SEO Strategy ? You can follow the keyword research process below to develop and implement a strong keyword strategy. Make a list of relevant topics related to your business  Consider 5 to 10 topic categories related to general areas that are important to your hotel activity. Then use these categories to find some specific keywords ; put yourself in the shoes of your buyer persona.  Fill in these topic categories with keywords Identify a few keywords that fall into these categories: keyword phrases that you think are important for ranking in SERPs, since your target customers are likely to search for these specific terms. For example: hotels in Paris, spas & restaurants, beautiful 4-star hotels, deluxe double rooms, etc. The point is to end with phrases that you think potential customers could use to search for something related to that particular topic category. You’ll narrow it down later on.  Another way to find keywords is to use Google Analytics to find out which keywords your website has been found for. Look at your site’s traffic sources and search your organic search traffic categories to identify the keywords people are using to reach your website.  Google also provides a free tool allowing you to monitor technical errors that may appear on your site: Google Search Console. Connected to your hotel site, Google Search Console will also allow you to analyze the keywords bringing you traffic. If you’re having trouble finding relevant search terms, you can always reach out to your frontline staff and ask them what types of terms customers are using or common questions they have.Research related search terms  If you can’t think of more keywords, check out related search terms that come up when you type them into Google. As you type a phrase and scroll to the bottom of Google results, you’ll notice some search query suggestions related to what you originally typed.  Look for combinations of head keywords and long-tail keywords  Head terms are keyword phrases that are usually shorter and more generic. Long-tail terms are longer keyword phrases of three or more words.  It is important to check that you are using a mix of head and long-term terms, as this will give you a keyword strategy that is balanced with long-term goals and short-term gains. This is because head keywords are typically searched for more frequently, making them generally more competitive and harder to rank for than long tail keywords. See how your competitors are ranking for these keywords Just because a keyword is important to your competitors doesn’t mean it’s important to you. However, if you understand the keywords your competitors are trying to rank for, you can re-evaluate your keyword list.  If your competitors are also ranking for specific keywords on your listing, it definitely makes sense to work on improving your rankings for those keywords. However, don’t overlook those that your competitors don’t seem to care about. This could be an opportunity for you to gain market share on significant terms.  In addition to manually searching for keywords in an incognito browser and seeing where your competitors are, you can use SEMrush to generate tons of free reports that show you the top keywords for the domain you entered. Fine-tune your keyword list Now that you have the right combination of keywords, it’s time to refine your lists with more data. You can use a mix of the Google AdWords Keyword Planner, and Google Trends. In the Keyword Planner, you can estimate the search volume and traffic for the keywords you are considering. You can take the information you learn from Keyword Planner and use Google Trends to fill in some blanks. Use the Keyword Planner to flag all of the keywords on your list that have too little or too much search volume, and view their trending history and their projections in Google Trends. You can see if low-volume terms might actually be something you should invest in now and reap the benefits for later.   The benefits of having a multilingual hotel website Speaking the language of your customers allows you to increase your direct bookings in a simple and fast way. You can make a first selection of foreign languages according to the most represented nationalities among your hotel’s customers or your website’s visitors in order to be sure to capitalize on this potential.  Indeed, having your website in several languages allows you to:Convert more travelers into customers: +27% conversion rate when a hotel website is translated into the traveler’s native language. They feel more comfortable booking a room on your website if it is written in their native language. User experience is a major factor in optimizing your direct booking rate. OTAs are already using this good practice! Optimize your search engine optimization (SEO): you will be better referenced in several markets if your website is in their language. Get better visibility and more ready-to-book visitors.To go further, the best solution is that your website integrates an automatic language detection to guarantee an optimal SEO in all the languages present on your website.    What are the KPIs to follow to know if my SEO strategy is working? In order to track your SEO performance, we advise you to use a tool such as Semrush or Ahrefs. This type of tool, once connected to your website, will allow you to have a detailed overview of your website’s SEO reporting.  On a weekly and monthly basis, you can start by monitoring the following KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in order to adjust your SEO strategy based on the results:Organic position by keywords: allows you to see at which position of the SERP) your website ranks for each keyword related to your business. To gain positions on a keyword, you must share or update quality content containing the word in question. This KPI also allows you to evaluate the organic traffic of your hotel website. Unique visitors: A unique visitor is a single internet user who visits your website one or more times during a given period. The number of unique visitors allows you to evaluate the traffic, the visitation of your hotel website. Bounce rate: corresponds to the percentage of visitors who have left your website after having seen only one page. The higher it is, the fewer visitors and therefore potential customers you retain on your website. Thus, the goal is to make your hotel website as attractive as possible. Authority score: Semrush’s proprietary KPI, this score informs you about the legitimacy, the weight of your website in your business sector. It is measured out of 100 and is based on backlinks, organic traffic, etc. For example, Apple has a score of 80/100, we can consider that a score between 30 and 40 is already very good to position yourself on highly competitive search terms.  Conclusion Developing an efficient SEO strategy is essential to increase your visibility among qualified travelers. Therefore, SEO allows you to increase your direct revenues.  Whether it’s via the settings, tracking or optimization of your website content, you can easily control several levers. Don’t hesitate to call on a webmarketing agency for the more technical aspects of organic search engine optimization.  Our hotel digital marketing specialists are here to help you, contact us!