What are hotel conversion tools?
Hotel conversion tools are digital tools that enhance the ability of hotels to drive direct bookings on their websites. Where a booking engine offers the capability to accept direct bookings, hotel conversion tools are what drive reservation volumes.
These tools may provide analytics and behavioural analysis. They may provide additional functionality to a website. Or they may make it easier to encourage guests to book directly through the website, rather than through a third party provider. Regardless of the specifics, hotel conversion tools are essential for transforming a hotel’s website into a revenue-driving booking platform.
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Why are hotel conversion tools important?
Hotel conversion tools are important for a number of reasons including:
- Increased Direct Bookings: More direct bookings mean fewer commission fees paid to OTAs. That’s more revenue for your bottom line as well as a reduction in your hotel’s reliance on third-party booking sites, de-risking your growth strategy.
- Enhanced Customer Experience: Conversion tools allow hotels to provide a seamless, user-friendly booking experience for their guests. With the data and extra functionality they provide, they can customise the booking process to align with their brand and meet the unique needs of their guests. This can greatly enhance the guest experience and contribute to customer loyalty.
- Improved Efficiency: These tools can automate many aspects of the booking process, such as sending confirmation emails, processing payments, and updating room availability in real-time. This can save hotel staff a significant amount of time and reduce the chance of errors.
- Greater Insights: Many hotel conversion tools come with analytics and reporting features. This allows hotels to gain valuable insights into their booking trends, customer behaviour, and overall performance. They can use this data to make more informed decisions and improve their operations.
- Stronger Guest Relationships: By enhancing direct booking conversion rate, hotels have the opportunity to build stronger relationships with customers. Conversion tools help the business to capture important guest information during the booking process, communicate directly with the guests, and personalise their experiences based on their preferences, driving returning guests and thus revenue.
- Competitive Advantage: In a competitive industry like hospitality, having the tools to create a user-friendly, efficient, and well-branded online booking system can give a hotel a significant edge over competitors who don’t offer such a seamless experience.
Website conversion rate metrics hoteliers need
Even after you have worked hard on search engine optimisation (SEO) at your hotel, you must run periodic analysis to track improvements. But with so much data available when analysing your hotel’s website statistics, it’s easy to focus too much on just conversion rates and hotel sales figures.
Understanding the importance of each data set can be challenging when you’re trying to gain valuable insight. To help with this task, here are some important metrics – that are sometimes overlooked – to give you crucial information about your website performance.
1. Track your high traffic web pages
A good first step is to find out what your most popular website landing pages are – first impressions last! You want the highest ranking pages to be as attractive as possible, with relevant content for your prospective hotel guests and a clear call to action.
Think of your landing pages as your first job interview. If it’s interesting enough guests will check out other pages, if not you’ll lose them right there and then. If one of your most visited landing pages is your home page, make sure you provide enough information about your property such as star rating, location, property images, services offered, options to book now, and anything else that can showcase your hotel.
2. Acquire actionable data from exit pages
As important as understanding where your traffic lands on your website is, you must know at what point you’re losing traffic too. Exit page statistics are very useful in finding key areas of improvement on your website.
For instance, it’s a bad sign if travellers are exiting from a page that’s involved in your hotel’s booking process. Your website should be easy to navigate and give your guests flexibility to explore, it should also give them clear instruction and call to actions throughout your pages – leave no room for doubt.
Make sure your high ranking exit page has this covered. If the content is irrelevant or if you have any technical issues, such as broken links, review the overall online experience for this page and adjust what is necessary.
3. Maximise engagement on your website
When it comes to online traffic, focus on quality over quantity. ‘Bounce Rate’ is an essential metric to analyse your traffic quality and engagement levels.
You can measure the percentage of visits in which the user had no interaction with the page and left the website. A number of factors can affect your bounce rates, so take some time to analyse where the traffic is coming from.
If you find you’re running a hotel marketing campaign with high bounce rates, check that the landing page has relevance to your campaign, and that your audience segmentation is correct, as you may be delivering paid advertising or emails to the wrong people.
4. Zero in on your hotel’s target markets
One of the most useful pieces of information when analysing your website statistics is your ‘Audience Geographic Localisation’ report, which takes into consideration your visitors’ IP addresses.
Cross-checking this data with other metrics will give you powerful insights and could identify potential new markets to invest marketing dollars in.
Try to identify untapped markets with higher conversion rates and lower traffic rates, and target this market during your hotel’s next online campaign.
Also check for areas of your website with higher traffic and below average conversion or high bounce rates and investigate areas for improvement in this region, for example; content translation.
Top hotel conversion tools hoteliers use to increase website conversions
The digital landscape of the hospitality industry is constantly evolving, and hoteliers must keep pace to ensure they maximise their online conversions. Achieving a robust conversion rate — the percentage of website visitors who become booking guests — is a high priority.
What is a good hotel website conversion rate?
The average hotel website conversion rate is between 1.5% – 2.5%, according to HotelTechReport. However, there are numerous tools available that can help to push these numbers even higher.
From tracking visitor behaviour and analysing user interactions, to managing online reputation and providing real-time chat support, these diverse tools can offer valuable insights and enhance the user experience.
Website Visitor Tracking Tools
Website visitor tracking tools help hoteliers understand how visitors interact with their website by tracking their behaviour and actions. These insights can include information about which pages the visitor viewed, how much time they spent on each page, what they clicked on, and at what point they left the site.
These web conversion metrics can then be used to optimise the website and make it more user-friendly, thus improving the conversion rate. These tools often incorporate features for segmenting visitors based on their behaviour, which can then be used to deliver personalised content or offers.
Website Heatmaps and Behaviour Analytics Tools
Website heatmap tools provide visual representations of how users interact with a website. They show where users click, how far they scroll, and what they look at or ignore. They’re different to website visitor tracking tools in that they are more focused around behaviour once someone is on a page and can provide more detailed insights than most website visitor tracking tools.
This information can help hoteliers identify popular areas and elements on their website that attract user attention, as well as areas that might be causing confusion or hindrance to the user journey. Based on these insights, website design and content can be optimised to improve user experience and conversion rates.
Online Reputation Management Tools
Online reputation management tools are used by hoteliers to monitor and manage their hotel’s online reputation. They track reviews and ratings across various online platforms and provide alerts for new feedback, allowing hoteliers to respond promptly to both positive and negative comments.
These tools can also provide insights into common customer complaints or praises, helping hotels to improve their services based on customer feedback. By managing their online reputation effectively, hotels can increase customer trust and improve their overall image, which can lead to higher website conversions.
Online Web Chat Bot Tools
Web chat bot tools provide real-time interaction between the hotel and website visitors. They can be used to answer queries, provide recommendations, and assist with the booking process, making it easier for potential guests to make a decision.
Some hotels use AI chatbots for basic queries and have human operators for more complex discussions. The immediate response and personal interaction can significantly improve the user experience and increase conversion rates.
These tools, from tracking visitor behaviour and visualising user interactions to managing online reputation and providing real-time chat support, all contribute to enhancing your hotel’s conversion rate. They provide crucial insights, personalised engagement, and improve the overall user experience on your website.
However, not every website platform will have the capability to integrate and utilise these tools to their full potential. Often, hoteliers will only discover the limitations of their chosen platform once they have already invested – which makes choosing the right partner from the start absolutely essential.
Take your property to the next level with hotel conversion tools in a single platform
Unleash the full potential of your hotel’s online presence with SiteMinder, a revolutionary platform designed specifically for medium to large-sized hotel businesses. Beyond just providing a booking engine, SiteMinder offers a hotel-specific website builder including a comprehensive suite of built-in and third-party conversion tools that can significantly enhance your website experience and improve conversion rates.
Here’s what Siteminder can offer your hotel business:
- Personalised Guest Experience: SiteMinder enables you to offer a bespoke booking journey, using intelligent data insights to tailor the experience to your guest’s unique needs. This includes personalised content, special offers, and direct communication opportunities, all of which can make your guests feel valued and encourage direct bookings.
- Comprehensive Analytics and Insights: With SiteMinder’s robust analytics capabilities, you can easily track and understand your booking trends, customer behaviour, and overall performance. These insights will empower you to make data-driven decisions, optimise your pricing strategy, and uncover new opportunities for growth, ultimately boosting your conversion rates.
- Seamless Integration and Automation: SiteMinder’s platform seamlessly integrates with your existing hotel management systems, streamlining your operations and eliminating the need for multiple platforms. It automates key aspects of the booking process, from room availability updates to payment processing and confirmation emails, for both direct bookings and reservations through practically every OTA in the market. This not only enhances efficiency but also reduces the risk of errors, offering a smooth and reliable booking experience for your guests.
Embrace the future of hotel management with SiteMinder and experience the benefits of having all your conversion tools in one platform. Ready to start your journey towards increased direct bookings, enhanced guest experiences, and improved revenue management? Contact us today to discover more about what SiteMinder can do for your business.
