6 Ways to Increase Your Hotel Website Traffic

NB: This is an article from : regent.marketing 

For hotels, the service and real-life experience are what will leave guests with fond memories, fantastic experiences and hopefully a desire to be a returning guest. But to get your guests there, you’ll need to increase your hotel website traffic first.

Because it isn’t enough to have a killer hotel website. Yes, if you have a high conversion rate, then you’re onto something. However, that conversion rate means nothing if you don’t have the numbers of potential guests.

With higher hotel website traffic, your stunning visuals will do the rest. So let’s explain how hoteliers can increase website traffic in a few easy steps.

Why Does a Hotel Need High Website Traffic?

More traffic means an increase in direct bookings.

It’s all well and good to have a hotel website that converts visitors into guests. But it’s a numbers game at the end of the day. 5% of 1000 is more than 40% of 100.

So even if your hotel web page conversion rate is low, with enough traffic you can increase your bookings, and fill up those rooms!

Compete With Brandjacking

It’s no secret that OTAs are your frenemy.

They’ll throw a bunch of bookings your way, but they’ll do it on their terms. They often brandjack on hotels, diverting potential guests onto their platform to make bookings at your hotel.

See our example below, this hotel is placed below the OTA page for the same hotel.

Once you finish this article, you’ll understand how to increase your hotel website traffic by competing with these OTAs!

Direct Bookings Mean More Revenue

As well as having a greater number of guest bookings than you otherwise would have had, if you optimise your hotel website you’ll save money on commissions.

Once you regain control of multiple bookings that would otherwise have come through OTAs, you’re saving the extra 15-25% commission on each booking.

That’s great news for your hotel revenue management plans as well as your bank account!

How to Get More Traffic to Your Hotel Website?

Let’s break it down for you now.

Hotel SEO

Anyone with even a basic background in marketing, hotel or otherwise, understands what SEO is, if not how to make the most of it.

For those of you who you don’t, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and every web page online uses it. In a nutshell, the better your SEO, the higher you rank on search engines such as Google.

As we mentioned earlier, this is where OTAs will brandjack your hotel if you don’t improve your Hotel SEO!

You’ll need a Hotel SEO guide to fully grasp how to improve your hotel website. It includes metadata, page titles, and much, much more.

Stay Active on Content

Okay, so we are borderline still talking about SEO here, but the borders are a little blurry.

Increasing hotel website traffic means that you have to stay current. It isn’t enough to set up your website and then leave it to work itself out. You can post articles and blogs online about a whole range of things (but you’ll optimise the SEO of them first!).

You can post about local events, attractions, your restaurant or other nearby interests. This is especially important for hotels that lean into destination marketing.

You could write about an annual knitting festival. Then, through the search patterns of knitting enthusiasts, you may have a group of grandmothers booking at your hotel for the next festival!

It doesn’t need to be an overwhelming task, but a steady drip of content on your site helps increase traffic to your hotel web pages.

Social Media Strategy

Social media has increased the marketing opportunities for hotels to inconceivable levels.

You can leverage social media in multiple different ways.

• You can treat your instagram profile as another landing page that redirects guests straight towards your websites.
• Ensure geotagging your hotel is easy, and reply to guests who do it.
• Reach out to old guests and connect with current ones in a matter of moments
• Keep up with memes and references, you never know when a funny Tweet of yours can go viral.

The point of making yourself accessible on social media isn’t directly to build a following, it’s to redirect potential guests to your hotel website and increase the traffic.

Of course, followers help. They are either previous guests who are likely to return, potential guests waiting to arrange their holiday or simply enthusiasts of your hotel’s social media.

Either way – it’s free hotel marketing!

Metasearch Engines

Similar to OTAs, but a little bit different.

Essentially, metasearch engines are like Google, but just for hotels. They’ll display all the room rates for your hotel from across a list of various sources, both direct and indirect.

If you make sure to list your hotel across all Metasearch engines, you’ll increase traffic to your hotel website.

Yes, metasearch engines often work on a cost-per-click model resulting in multiple leads that don’t pan out, but the costs are far more negligible than those charged by OTAs.

Connect Locally

If you want to improve the guest experience, then logically you can offer them discounts to local activities by cultivating partnerships within the local community.

Maybe a city tour guide offers 10% for any guests from your hotel. A local bar gives your guests a round of shots on entry. Anything you like and find agreeable with local business!

Well it improves the guest experience, but how about the website traffic?

Because as part of the deal, you ensure that these businesses write about your website too. They go on their own online profiles and post on social media and in articles about how your guests get that little bit extra.

The primary bonus is that this boosts the amount of backlinks that your hotel website has, and improves hotel SEO. A secondary bonus is free advertising!

And we love nothing more than free advertising.

Google Ads

If it fits into your hotel revenue management plan, Google Ads will drive your hotel website traffic like nothing else.

Google Ads, or for those more old-school among you “Google Adwords”, allows you to place adverts on Google Search results. The top 1-3 results of almost every Google search are a result of Google Ads. Try it now, you are bound to see the little “ad” to the left of one of your search results.

It’s costly, and choosing the right keywords to bid on is a science unto itself, but PPC advertising provides immediate results and boosts your hotel website traffic immediately!

Hotel Website Traffic in a Nutshell

We’ve talked a lot, so let’s recap briefly and make another more important point.

Hotel SEO

Make sure your website is optimised for search engines. This means including keywords and phrases that people might use when searching for hotels online.

Push Content

Publish high-quality content on your website that is relevant to your guests. This could include articles about local attractions, restaurant recommendations, or travel tips.

Social Media Strategy

Use a social media strategy to promote your hotel and its services. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram offer great opportunities to reach new guests and connect with current ones.

Metasearch Engines

List your hotel on metasearch engines to increase your hotel’s online presence and reach online. You’ll touch with new visitors and new guest types along the way.

Local Connections

Build your website ranking, increase hotel website traffic and improve your guest experience by connecting with local businesses. Cooperate in order to make your businesses better together.

Google Ads

If you have the revenue to spare and really want to drive your website traffic high, bookings on keywords and taking control of your brand is the way to go.

The Key Takeaway When it Comes to Traffic on Your Hotel Website

Not all traffic is qualified traffic.

Generating traffic on your hotel website is easy, making sure that it’s qualified traffic is slightly more tricky. Traffic means potential guests, qualified traffic will mean likely guests.

Thankfully, as long as you are honest with the portrayal of your website online, and accurate with the information you include, your traffic will  be qualified traffic. The guests that need your hotel will find you if you do an excellent job.

It’s not just a one-time effort though, maintaining ever-growing increases in hotel website traffic is an ongoing job, believe us! As a hotel marketing agency it’s our priority to get guests looking at your website clicking on that “Book Now” button.

If you’re still not sure how to improve your hotel website traffic, get in touch with us today. We offer a free hotel marketing audit of your hotel’s online presence! We’ll compile an audit, have a one-on-one meeting with you to explain our findings, and then send you the full report to glance back at as you wish.

Remember to check out our hotel marketing guides, blogs and more to learn more about how you can boost your bookings and skyrocket your revenue!