When it comes to hotel stays more than half are booked through online travel agents (OTAs), according to travel research firm Phocuswright.
So if a potential guest makes it to your hotel website, you need to harness the power of your design, words, and usability to keep them there and close that booking.
Thanks to ‘book direct’ campaigns, loyalty programmes and a customer desire to connect with where they’re going to stay, direct hotel bookings are bouncing back. They even look set to overtake OTAs.
So if you want to take advantage of this momentum, you need a website that is welcoming, persuasive and creates a connection with your audience. Not sure where to start?
Here are our favourite hotel website content examples, showing the brands that are doing things the right way to maximise bookings and build an affinity with future guests.
Ikos: For great photography
Ikos has made beautiful landscapes, aesthetic design and the luxury of complete relaxation a core element of the brand. The best hotel website designs take the guest experience and bring it to life online - you’ll see the essence of the Ikos experience reflected across the website.
The hotel brand has invested heavily in its photography, with incredible visuals for every element of the experience. They always put people at the heart of the action, showing families enjoying moments together rather than posing for the camera. It all helps transmit the relaxed, welcoming experience guests can expect at the resorts - you can almost picture yourself there.
This guest-focused photography is complemented by zoomed-in images to showcase specific dishes and design elements, as well as wider images that showcase the natural beauty of each area.
Look closely, and you’ll also discern a very slightly different colour palette for each of the resorts to create a unique identity for each one.
Ikos has developed a distinctive and poetic tone of voice to reflect the elegance of the imagery the brand uses. For example, the page for Ikos Dassia, one of two resorts located in Corfu, pulls out the unique attributes of the island with novelistic detail, supported by various enticing and tangible images.
Palladium Group: For easy navigation
With a wide range of different hotel brands, the Palladium Hotel Group website could easily have been an overwhelming experience for the user.
However, this is a brand that understands the importance of UX and has ensured that its website is smooth and easy to navigate - a key investment if you want to boost your hotel website conversion rate.
You can search for hotels by dates, destinations or types, whether you’re looking for luxury, family-oriented stays, boutique hotels or city breaks. It’s also possible to search by a specific brand that is part of the Palladium Hotel Group, whether it’s ultra-modern urban Only YOU Hotels, adults-exclusive luxury TRS Hotels or Grand Palladium Hotels & Resorts for family fun.
Each brand page is uniform in design, but the hotel website content and imagery vary greatly depending on the type of audience that each brand wants to reach. The tone of voice reflects that of the target audience, making them feel immediately recognised and understood - building a sense of affinity with the brand.
From the Palladium Hotel Group homepage, it’s also easy to find offers and discounts. This helps cross-pollinate across the brand. If there isn’t a special deal on the hotel you wanted, perhaps you may choose another from the Palladium family.
Marriott: For great information
Marriott International’s amazing blog, Marriott Bonvoy Traveller, helps the brand boost its Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) - the results pages when people use search engines to find information online.
Its blog also helps establish its status as a travel authority in a whole variety of destinations around the world.
It’s important for potential guests to view your brand as providing useful and relevant information, as it gives you credibility. Marriott Bonvoy’s blog is an example of good hotel website content, offering inspiration for all types of travel, from road trips to weekend getaways, with useful destination guides filled with valuable tips and local trends.
It’s easy to see Marriott Bonvoy’s approach, breaking its content up into separate themed pillars, through a selection of blogs such as 6 of Europe’s Must-See Natural Wonders That Deliver on the ‘Wow’ Factor, 6 Ways Travelers Can Respect Local Wildlife and These 9 Palatial Hotels Royally Impress with Storybook Stays, demonstrating its diverse content coverage.
IHG: For a strong brand experience
The on-point branding of IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) makes it instantly recognisable. Upon visiting its website, you are greeted with captivating and bold content that highlights the variety of hotel brands within the IHG family and its global reach.
Juxtaposed alongside content about its loyalty programme and the types of offers you can enjoy, it presents a strong argument for why you should be booking with this brand. Through the power of storytelling, IHG shows its value and creates a sense of aspiration. The way the InterContinental Hotels & Resorts brand is presented provides an insightful example. By deliberately showcasing its prestige and luxury, it presents itself as an aspirational product that people want to be a part of. You can see this in the introductory text on the brand homepage.
“InterContinental Hotels & Resorts has delighted luxury travellers since 1946, serving as a meeting place for heads of state, a setting for world-changing speeches, and the impetus for some of the most famous love stories of all time.”
Just reading that introduction makes you want to be a part of the brand and its history.
Accor: For easy booking
With its hotel website content, Accor hopes to inspire convenience and ease of use in the minds of its audience. Prices, discounts, and offers are displayed upfront and the destination or hotel search is the most visible feature of the homepage, which gives the user a sense of transparency.This is especially important when presenting various well-known but diverse brands, such as mid-range Mercure and Novotel, luxury Sofitel and budget-friendly Ibis.
You can search easily by destination or accommodation type, offering more ways to browse for people who aren’t necessarily loyal to one specific brand. Accor’s partnerships with other brands for holiday features, such as car hire, also make planning your trip a more seamless and smooth experience, helping to improve the hotel website conversion rate.
A holiday is an expensive investment for the customer in terms of time and money. Ensuring that your brand is as clear and convenient as possible about the booking process, backed up by efficient customer service and easy reward tracking, serves to inspire confidence that this is a brand worth investing in.
Sani: For inspiring elegance
The elegance of Sani Resort carries across to the digital realm, and you can tell it has invested in its hotel website development.
An emotive video alongside the header ‘Crafting memories’ transmits the luxury and elegance of this brand, as well as its focus on creating escapes for families.
The use of sophisticated typography, inspiring videos and soothing colour palettes throughout the site helps even the most casual visitor fall in love with this resort and its five hotels. The website design is clean and minimalist, with small inspirational texts and an image-led look.
Once drawn in, the brand keeps the audience hooked with a smooth discovery process to explore the various hotel and suite options, augmented by compelling copy that focuses on emotion and persuasion, effortlessly converting leads into active customers.
When a user proceeds through to reserve a room, the booking experience is seamless and clear, a reflection of the whole brand experience.
And here's what not to do
When it comes to hotel websites, providing a rich experience online is key in the battle against OTAs.
With the right approach to your online presence, as a hotel brand, you have the opportunity to stand out from the competition and encourage people to book directly.
You don’t have to have the budget of Accor or IHG to perfect your website. You can look to them as examples and adopt elements you like. There are also some pitfalls you should avoid…
Visuals are so important in enticing customers to beautiful destinations and amazing hotel amenities, so choosing the wrong photos or showcasing poor-quality photography is a problem. Paying for crisp, high-quality images taken by a professional is a fantastic investment, and they can be applied across all areas of the brand, from brochures to social media.
Avoid inauthentic and irrelevant content. As a hotel brand, your key strategy is converting leads into sales, which means concise content. If in doubt, think short, sharp paragraphs filled with useful information, considering all the questions that a guest may ask or assessing the queries they ask most when calling your hotel.
Ensure that your homepage provides the answers to those questions, and that the content is positive and persuasive.
Don’t just go for the cheapest software. To ease the customer through the booking process with greater efficiency, the software you use for bookings is vital - so it’s worth the investment. The booking process is part of creating a positive user experience (UX), with a clear navigation process, no lagging and no annoying popups (as well as complete security).
Don’t just leave the website up to team members without expertise. The clarity of your brand identity and values is essential, so that guests understand exactly the experience that awaits them. Visibility is key, so make sure your SEO strategy is robust and informed by experts. SEO will help new users discover your brand and what it offers, essentially bringing people to you.
SEO provides long-term benefits for your brand without the need for continuous investment in adverts, generating traffic and leads and helping you boost your hotel website conversion rate. This, combined with captivating content and strong UX to make the navigation and booking process as clear as possible, will inspire and engage your audience.
For all these reasons, a well-designed website is so important for your hotel brand.
At Peregryn Agency, we provide effective branding and digital marketing services for hotels and travel brands, supported by two decades of experience in the industry.
We work with leading hotel brands around the world to help them define their brand strategy and communicate their value to their target audiences. From design and strategy to copywriting and SEO, let us help you boost your online presence.
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