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By Jason Price and Max Starkov , February 2003
Direct Online Distribution Should Become the Focus of Hoteliers� Internet Strategy This year over 13% of all revenues in hospitality will be generated from the Internet. Three years from now the Internet will generate over 20% of all hotel bookings (PhoCusWright). Roughly 52% of all online bookings in 2002-2003 will be completed directly through hotel-sponsored websites. Forrester Research confirms that people who book online prefer to use a supplier website over intermediaries. Forrester Research: �Which of the following types of websites have you
used to book travel in the past year?�
If your hotel is not generating at least 53% of its online bookings directly from the hotel website, but from intermediaries, then you are not competitive on the Web and run the risk of long term price and brand erosion. The Internet is the ultimate �Direct Distribution Medium�. It provides the hotel with long-term competitive advantages by lessening dependence on intermediaries, online discounters and traditional channels that may soon become obsolete. Any promising, sustainable, and defensible distribution strategy must start locally at the hotel website. Direct-to-consumer online distribution has the following benefits:
The foundation of a hotel's direct online distribution strategy begins with the website. A well functioning, fully optimized hotel website is a real asset that serves as the chief instrument to capture new markets and facilitate transactions. Unfortunately a majority of today�s hotel websites and web strategies in hospitality suffer from two common flaws: Websites built with no online distribution strategy Most hotel websites are performing poorly as far as online distribution and search engine strategy are concerned. Why? Most hotel websites have been developed by web designers who know nothing about the hospitality industry, based on input and concepts by hoteliers who are not experts on Internet strategy, online distribution, and eMarketing. And many of them were designed as online brochures without taking into account fundamental online distribution principles. Using a �quick fix� approach to undo what�s fundamentally wrong Such hotel websites, built without clear online distribution concepts and principles, inevitably produce poor results and few bookings. Hoteliers then turn to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) vendors for a quick fix of the hotel website to boost search engine rankings and increase online revenues. In reality, �slapping� meta tags to a stale, user-unfriendly website and submitting it to the search engines can achieve few sustainable results. Only a fully optimized website can produce the desired online revenues and position your hotel company ahead of the competition. Website optimization takes a comprehensive look at the website and prepares it for optimal performance (maximum user experience, bookability and conversion rates) and yes, for the search engines. Especially in hospitality, regaining control of distribution from the online discounters and building a presence over the web directly to consumers is increasingly important. Website optimization is an imperative in today�s marketplace. Hoteliers who have instituted website optimization strategies are ahead of the curve with their own direct distribution strategies. They have higher placement on the search engines and are able to convert more lookers into booker. These hoteliers understand that online consumers prefer to buy directly from the hotel. They recognize the hotel website is a source to control room inventory, hotel descriptions and content, room pricing and availability, group-bookings, and corporate rate programs, something completely unachievable on any third-party channel. What is Website Optimization? To begin with, a hotel website is not an online brochure. It is not meant to serve as reference material secondary to a sales pitch. The website is a 24/7 sales and marketing tool, a hotel�s top producing �virtual� sales office. The website is a �living organism� with descriptive copy, images and keyword updates, special packages, email capture, and overall fresh and locally relevant information--all meant to enhance the user experience and all easily achievable at minimal cost. Therefore, website optimization addresses eDistribution, revenue management, and overall marketing�well outside the role of web designers and more closely associated with eBusiness experts. Website optimization consists of several core components that combined reflect best practices. These are: user-friendly website, search engine readiness, website bookability, and eCRM. The first two components are further addressed in the remainder of this article. Several features that characterize a user-friendly website and search engine readiness are identified underneath the headings below. User-friendly website
Website Optimization vs. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Did you that know 85% of Internet users rely on search engines to locate information over the Web? (e.g. Yahoo, Google, MSN, AltaVista, etc). Independent hotels, branded hotels, hotel management companies and lodging companies not part of a major brand must rely even more on search engines for referrals. A cottage industry of SEO vendors has risen in recent years to take advantage of businesses� lack of knowledge on how to build a web presence. Unsuspecting hoteliers turn to SEO vendors for a �miracle cure� to boost search engine rankings and increase search engine submissions. In reality, �slapping� meta tags to a stale, user-unfriendly website will achieve minimal sustainable results. Optimizing a website takes a comprehensive approach and goes far deeper in the analysis, as illustrated by the list above, than just by tweaking meta tags. The problem worsens for hotels with artsy websites built in Flash. SEO vendors sell their expensive service well-knowing search engines cannot read Flash. Similar problems arise when unwitting hoteliers contract with SEOs to optimize dynamically generated websites and websites with complicated navigational structures. These structures further inhibit search engine �spiders� from indexing and cataloging websites. Rather than address the core components of website optimization, sadly, SEOs focus primarily on the meta tags of the website, a fraction of what represents best practices. Even internally driven hotel-based SEO efforts are a waste of resources. meta tags are no longer supported by most search engines as this is the easiest place to spam. Improving an existing website requires a closer look at best practices and this comes in the form of website optimization�a comprehensive approach to building a sustainable, competitive, and defensible website. Not to belabor the point mentioned earlier, but SEO vendors are only too eager to promise you top positioning on the search engines. Many "burnt" hotel clients may tell you to save money considering the negligible results achieved. In reality, no one can guarantee a website will appear on the top search engine results of Yahoo or Google�no one. Only a comprehensive website optimization strategy can assure that your website will be considered seriously by the search engines. The right eBusiness experts will advise you to steer clear of SEO vendors. The following quick guide on search engines helps dispel myths espoused
by the SEO industry.
Putting Website Optimization into Practice The Website Optimization Blueprint With general theory out of the way, let's get to work creating a website optimization blueprint. The blueprint drives the entire website optimization strategy and serves as the vehicle to communicate to the team, including web designer, exactly what goes into the website. A well developed blueprint serves as the backbone for the entire direct-to-consumer distribution strategy. The blueprint, built by professionals schooled in online distribution, revenue management, and eMarketing strategies, creates a comfort zone in forming the clarity hoteliers so desperately need. The blueprint nicely bridges the gap between web designers who will eventually implement the blueprint and hoteliers who don't know how to use the Internet as a distribution channel. From a feasibility standpoint, a website optimization blueprint serves
a number of purposes:
Constructing the Optimization Blueprint According to a recent eMarketer survey, the top two most important website
features sought by Internet users is the credibility of the content (80%),
which suggests not just the body copy but the extent to which the site
promotes its products for building consumer trust, and the quality of the
website navigation for ease of use (80%).
In other words, the success of turning "lookers into bookers� is: a) consumer confidence that what you say is for real with back-up to support your claims, and b) consumers are able to navigate their way through a website to find the information and make a reservation. Build confidence with credible copy. With the Internet it is not always clear who is behind the information being sold. For example, who exactly is Hotels.com? When a third party channel promotes a hotel better than the actual hotel, you know something is seriously wrong. Ease of navigation seems simple enough, yet is commonly overlooked. Be sure the navigation is tiered, buttons appropriately labeled and representative of the copy. Enough money has been sent drawing consumers to your site, now don�t drive them away. Building Credible and Relevant Copy The body copy plays an essential role in promoting the hotel to web customers. It is the copy that describes the hotel products, features, room services, amenities, and local destination information. The copy should be truthful and written in short, declarative, and descriptive sentences. And remember, bullet points were invented with website copy in mind. Web readers are unpredictable. They jump from page to page in no particular order and at most scan the copy. Because of this tendency each web page should be constructed in "chunks" or precise segments of information for quick reference, referral, and transaction. Therefore �chunking the copy� is essential when creating the website content. By chunking content each Main page can act as a standalone page fully optimized with copy, meta tags, description tags, and page titles for the search engines. Chunking allows the reader to grasp the essence of the product and click to view, inquire, or simply book a room no matter which page he selects to scan. Recall the list of key words and phrases for search engines alluded to earlier? This list must now permeate throughout the copy of the website as well as serve in the form of �invisible� copy: page titles, meta tags and description tags, and speak to not just customers, but search engines. They serve as cues for search engines to index and catalog the website. The real expertise is to weave the keywords into the copy so that the copy reads as credible promotion and in the same time �speak� to the search engines. Building the Keyword and Key Phrase List Imagine an army of search spiders, bots, and meta crawlers that sift through the copy analyzing, indexing, and cataloging each submitted page found on the website. Leg work goes into researching keywords and key phrases popular yet relevant to the local destination and then weaving these keywords throughout the "visible" and "invisible" copy. In hospitality, only a Destination-Focused Search Engine Strategy works as the product by definition is destination specific. This strategy involves optimizing the destination pages within a single or multi-market website (multi-property lodging company with presence in several vastly different markets). For example, within a corporate portal a cluster of hotels in San Francisco and Chicago should each have its own optimized destination page and search engine strategy. Be sure to include product related keywords that speak specifically to the product being sold�in our case hotels and hotel rooms. Developing the destination related keywords list is much more complex and trickier because it requires not only identifying the most popular keywords for the particular destination, but the most popular relevant keywords. "Singapore Airline" and "Singapore Girl" are popular keywords yet have no relevance for customers searching a Singapore hotel. Creating the keyword list requires a combination of Internet, hospitality and destination-specific knowledge and extensive research. Some required steps include:
Scoring top positioning on search engines will depend on how well constructed
the word and phrase list reflects your product and destination, and only
comes after careful research on consumer search behavior and purchasing
habits. Building this list requires software to analyze popularity, word
matching to analyze relevancy, bench research to dig out unique and specific
words and common phrases to the search that characterize the destination,
and finally some human discretion from those with a depth and understanding
of online marketing in hospitality and use of search engines.
Building a Better Navigation Website optimization calls for a clearly defined and well-constructed multi-tiered navigation. We are all familiar with the website navigation bar which delineates the contents of the website. A navigation bar allows users to scan the labels on the buttons of the navigation bar in order to determine which buttons are personally relevant. The labels are also meant to represent the essence of the content behind each button the user selects. Too often, the origins of a hotel website strategy had begun by simply digitizing the hotel brochure and then slapping on a booking engine a few years later. Over time the website grew into a hodge-podge of random content devoid of any strategic logic. The navigation frequently winds up being overburdened with redundant and confusing information, mixing consumer with administrative features ("View King Suite" with �Career Opportunities�, "Investor Relations", "Press Releases"), and misrepresenting the content and copy of the website. Creating navigation tiers has proven to be a highly successful approach. Based on the hotel strategy, product mix, and target audience, the website navigation should reflect a two, three or four-tier navigation structure. Each tier represents an order of authority that helps layout the organization of the website. By using a tiered structure you can arrange the navigation in such a way that it moves users comfortably and easily toward a set of services, including the reservation process. As a minimum, a hotel website should have:
The next step is to streamline the navigation to contain only core products and services. Avoid cluttering the Main Navigation Bar with superfluous activities. What is more important, making a reservation or offering employment opportunities? A hotel website is a business-to-customer enterprise. Streamline the navigation by removing or shifting non-essential services away from the Main Navigation Bar. A poorly designed navigation will never turn lookers into bookers. Sadly in this depressed travel market every incremental bit of business is vital yet many hotel navigations are poorly designed and confuse users with an overload of unnecessary navigational choices and useless information that neither enhances the hotel's image nor drive consumer desire to make a reservation. Conclusion We've covered a lot of ground and hopefully it has become as clear as ice that website optimization is essential for building a direct-to-consumer distribution strategy. It should serve as the foundation of any long-term competitive distribution strategy. Website optimization starts at the local hotel and encompasses a comprehensive approach for boosting search engine ranking and converting lookers into bookers. The approach underpins the total online direct-to-consumer distribution effort. Successful hoteliers use their websites to communicate directly with consumers and establish long-term interactive relationships. A website optimization blueprint drives the overall direct distribution strategy and blueprint creation is well beyond the skills of SEO vendors and web designers. Partner with experienced eBusiness strategist to help optimize the website and leverage the Internet to its fullest potential.
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Also See | Hotelier�s 2003 Top Ten Internet Resolutions / Max Starkov and Jason Price / January 2003 |
The Internet: Hotelier's Best Ally or Worst Enemy? What Went Wrong with Direct Web Distribution in Hospitality? / Max Starkov / October 2002 | |
Brand Erosion or How Not to Market Your Hotel on the Web / Max Starkov / April 2002 | |
Do You Know Where Your Hotel is in Cyberspace? / Max Starkov and Jason Price / Jan 2002 | |
Convention and Visitors Bureaus: Ten Action Steps To Soften the Impact / Max Starkov / Oct 2001 | |
How to Turn Lookers into Bookers- Recommendation Engines in Travel and Hospitality / Max Starkov / Aug 2001 |