For some time now, I have urged hotels, especially the Independent variety,
to play hard at the electronic marketing game.  There are big rewards
for those who play well. The Internet revolutionized travel marketing and
gave us the ability to market hotels on a global scale...at rates everyone
can afford. To win, there are three primary elements which need your attention;
The Global Distribution System (GDS), third-party aggregators, and, of
course, your own web site. 

The GDS is only a minor concern for franchised properties because most
franchises require connection through the franchise reservation system.
But, if your property does not carry a franchise flag, it would be fool-hardy
not to have a GDS connection. 

For those not familiar with the GDS, this is what gives travel agents
and airlines the ability to book real-time reservations at your hotel.
There are companies like GenaRes in Texas, Pegasus, and others which will
connect your property to the GDS for a very reasonable fee. There are re-sellers
of GDS services, but why pay a third-party fee when you can deal directly
with the carrier? Check them out thoroughly.

In spite of all the controversy created by the major hotel franchises,
third-party aggregators like Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz, the three
largest, have the clout to produce a volume contribution to your top-line.
You can also get listed with these power-house third-party sites through
your GDS listing. 

Last, but not least, how healthy is your web site? The most common statement
that I hear these days is “I have a web site that looks great, yet I am
still not getting many reservations from it.” The general answer is that
it probably was not designed to produce reservations. 

There are many hotel sites that look great but lack many of the fundamentals
necessary to generate reservations. It’s kind of like hiring a good-looking
talented sales person who doesn’t talk to or meet with clients. 

This scenario is very frustrating to many hotel owners who expect great
booking results just because they like how their site looks; and why shouldn’t
they? Unfortunately, they don’t realize that a web site’s ultimate performance
depends on elements which are not readily visible to the uninitiated. 

There are factors like well thought-out Meta Tags which compliment the
site’s text, proper placement of text elements such as: the hotel’s location,
facilities, and things-to-do in the area, and an understanding that a hotel
web site should be designed to produce reservations, not become an online
brochure. These factors affect a site’s search ability, and marketing ability
to sell rooms. 

Site content is king; yet, many site designers spend more time on photography
and flash elements than they spend on creating good selling text. Remember,
search spiders and site visitors read text. Sometimes one gets the impression
that the text was created just to fill space around the photography. 

Many of the web site designs that I review remind me of the three blind
men trying to describe an elephant. “It’s a long and thin like a snake”,
says the first man as he feels the elephants tail; “No, it’s fat like a
hippo”, says the second man as he pats the elephants belly”; “It‘s like
a thick snake without fangs” says the third man as he feels the elephants
trunk. Everyone sees their own web site differently.  Few people view
their web site as a visitor sees and uses it

If you hire someone to design a web site for your hotel, provide input
on how you would like it to look, in general, but, understand that it needs
to be designed to “sell” your location and rooms; not to be a work of art. 

Explore the sites of online sales experts like Expedia, Travelocity,
and Orbitz. These people have the perfect online formula for selling rooms;
nothing fancy, few flash elements, the necessary information to sell rooms,
but not too much or unnecessary information. And, they rule the roost when
it comes to search ability and hotel bookings. 

The fact is that there are many elements which need to be incorporated
into a web site for it to perform well; to produce business. The most common
problem is that many hotels feel that they must include every element they
can think of at the time, which usually results in a web site that is too
difficult to navigate, does not follow search engine rules, and only serves
to confuse the user. Too much information, too many pages, and unnecessary
information can kill reservation production. 

I have a client and friend who is now on his fourth web site design.
One of these designs was created by a very large web design company and
it didn’t work at all. It produced only a handful of reservations and,
after six months, produced not one search engine referral. His next site
worked well, producing more than 30% of his total reservations, but it
didn’t look the way he liked, so he scraped that one. His current site,
designed by a well known hotel web design company looks great, but was
not optimized for search ability and produces very little. Get the point?