IN-DEPTH: Hotels should implement “Smart” websites - sites that know the market segment they are speaking to based on the way the visitor has arrived to the site, and provide content tailored to that specific market segment, says Amanda See, Regional Director for Sabre Hospitality Solutions

Published: 02 May 2011

IN-DEPTH: Hotels should implement “Smart” websites - sites that know the market segment they are speaking to based on the way the visitor has arrived to the site, and provide content tailored to that specific market segment, says Amanda See, Regional Director for Sabre Hospitality Solutions

By Ritesh Gupta

Travel sites are connecting more with their customers through social media and interactive website features, including mobile applications or offering a Live Help feature.

So how are hotel websites starting to move beyond the traditional price/ date/ destination search criteria to provide more flexibility to customers?

Amanda See, Regional Director for Sabre Hospitality Solutions explains: “Traditional sites followed a more step-by-step model whereby a visitor arrived at the home page and is led to the booking process, with informational pages and photos in between. However, as hotel Web development has evolved we have seen that few hotels are specifically tailored to only one market segment, so why should their sites be?”

Amanda added, “We suggest to hotels that they implement “Smart” websites – sites that know the market segment they are speaking to based on the way the visitor has arrived to the site, and provide content tailored to that specific market segment.”

Smart sites allow hotels to personalise content – including navigation elements, images, and user generated content - to the visitor looking to plan an event, book a romantic spa getaway, or visit the property on business, while satisfying the shopper’s needs quickly and bring them closer to purchasing.

“A Smart Website is a win-win for hotels and shoppers by offering an efficient user experience and a tailored brand experience,” Amanda told EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta in an interview. Excerpts:

How do you assess the outlook of travel websites today and how have they changed?

Amanda See:

The online travel industry is rapidly evolving with the demands of today’s travellers. Content is available through a variety of sources including third party travel sites, review sites, social media sites and destination pages. Travel marketers should expect that when potential guests visit their website, they may be landing on various pages based on their searches and are often coming loaded with information from other sites. For this reason, hospitality websites today should engage consumers at every level and provide shoppers with the ability to find what they are looking for on each page, easily and simply.

As web developers we have the ability to present shoppers with engagement opportunities in a variety of places, and today’s effective hotel websites should be designed by anticipating shoppers’ behaviour and capitalising on these through strategically placing calls to action throughout the site. With the variety of specific content available to today’s travellers, we have seen more and more shoppers coming to hotel Websites looking for highly specific content, down to room layout, specific amenities, photos and videos of room views, and more. Hotel websites need to provide this content while also providing clear calls to action at every step of the way.

One of the biggest ways that hotel websites have changed is the way that content is delivered. We have been talking about mobile Websites for a number of years now, but the changes to this landscape including the huge growth in tablets and the variety of mobile devices and platforms now available mean that hotel Websites need to evolve with travellers’ rapidly evolving demand for content in different shapes and forms. Device agnostic design and development helps ensure that travel websites can be accessed by any shopper at any time, without losing out on key market segments due to the site not being optimised for certain platforms. We are past the days that the PC web should be the main focus when creating a travel website.

Delivery of content is empowering and critical, but should be tied back to the business objectives that one wants to achieve. In your opinion, how can travel sites go about utilising features such as videos, blogs etc and set specific, measurable goals related to business metrics, and then track them regularly and measure the ROI?

Amanda See:

Absolutely - a beautiful website will not do a great deal of good unless it is engaging the consumer and meeting a hotel’s business objectives by converting shoppers into guests. Revenue, conversions, page views, and visitor satisfaction are affected by every millisecond that can be shaved from a potential guests’ overall experience and search.

Users want dynamic, content-rich pages with various features to load in 2-3 seconds. A marketer’s goal should be able to understand their market segments and be able to anticipate their shopping behaviour in order to capitalise by meeting their needs. Multivariate tests can help do this. Values can be assigned on every website interaction (including videos, sharing, page clicks, etc), giving marketers the ability to track engagement at the finest level and determine their content based on measurable results.

It is being underlined that travel videos are the most important and fastest growing trend in travel planning today and users want more visual options to help them plan the perfect trip. Recently, online travel community IgoUgo predicted that more than half of travellers will use video to plan trips by 2012. How and why should one go about video content at this stage?

Amanda See:

Travellers today are often looking for very specific details of what they can expect from their experience. Video can be utilised to sell your brand experience in a fuller and richer way than most other media, and allows you to provide highly visual content to merchandise your property. A visually rich site has been shown to have a high impact on visitors and can engage quickly and effectively. The more high quality video content you can provide, the more opportunity the website has in showcasing the total experience that users can expect from your brand.

It is being highlighted that for the PC web, a majority of users report that website speed is more important to them than rich functionality, when it comes to the overall quality of the user experience. What do you make of this assessment and how should one prioritise or balance out facets such as speed and functionality when it comes to websites?

Amanda See:

Indeed, most PC web travel bookers today are savvy, know their options, and want to get their results quickly. A website page shouldn’t take more than 2 to 3 seconds to load, or its content quickly becomes irrelevant when the load time causes a search to move away from its pages.

Page optimisation improvements recommendations include methods such as a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) sprite technique of combining graphics when possible which reduces the number of HTTP requests. Flash files also need to be properly optimised to minimise file size while maintaining optimal quality. There are also server-side technologies such as GZIP compression and combining scripts and any other text files to enhance load speed. Finally, an overall reduction in the amount of HTML tag markup generated will aid in preventing excessive load times.

Earlier this year, an e-commerce professional mentioned that the packaging site of tomorrow could just be a travel shopping cart that lets you add different components from different sites then price it for you when you are ready and even finding the lowest price and you are ready to book. What’s your take on online travel shopping in the time to come?

Amanda See:

This also rings true in many cases for hotel shoppers. Currently, the key element to hospitality e-commerce is the hotel booking engine. Every hotel website should integrate a high-quality booking engine that has been designed to help potential guests book not only their rooms, but whatever other elements might add to the value of their hotel stay because, as you mention, you can add to a guest’s experience by allowing them to customise the components of their stay, even at the property level.

Amanda will present a workshop on “The Key to Effective Hospitality Websites” as part of TDS Asia Complimentary Workshops. EyeforTravel is running a series of interactive seminars and educational workshops as part of the Travel Distribution Summit Asia 2011 exhibition. These workshops will compliment two days of in-depth presentations, to be held in Singapore (May 18-19, 2011).

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Marco Saio
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E: marco@eyefortravel.com
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