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Dear [name]
We are often amazed at the time and effort Hotels will give to their website 'look and feel' compared with the relative neglect they give to how their website is performing. We can pretty much guarantee that as soon as a new Marketing Manager takes over a property the first thing they demand is a new website, even if the old one is only a few months old, often prompted by 'Offline Marketing Experts' with comments such as 'your website is an extension of your brand.......' This leads to enormous amounts of time being spent on logos, colours and other brand issues. This is roughly comparable to having a Race Car, repainting it a different colour then expecting it to go round the track faster!
 Part of this is habit, as before the web was invented Hotel Managers would have spent a lot of time designing and approving brochures, and they dont see any difference in a website. But there is a difference, for 2 reasons.
1. Customers browsing habits sitting at a computer are not the same as sitting comfortably on a settee reading a brochure. On the internet, whether we admit it or not, we are scanning quickly huge amounts of information. Some un-provable statistics state that web visitors have just 7 seconds to find something to catch their eye or they move on to the next site. Websites with large, 'slow to load' graphics will not stand a chance.
2. Like it or not Google dominates your online business. If you have a good Google Search Engine Ranking, you have more traffic and more bookings, however at the risk of over-simplifying a complex story, to get a good Google Ranking you need text on your website that is regularly updated. Very few hotels will make the commitment to providing good well written text, and even fewer will ensure that their staff is trained to be regularly adding content.
 Over 6 years ago we attended a seminar where the Ryanair CTO asked the audience to guess how much budget Michael O Leary gives to web design, Estimates of course were in the millions, but the answer was 'zero'. Our guess is that this was a misleading, but useful to understand response. At that time it was probably true that Ryanair was spending nothing on website DESIGN, web designers in our office often commented that the website looked like it had been designed by an 8 year old. BUT quite likely the cost of providing the FUNCTIONALITY would have been in the millions ie The flight search, and the ability to select options such as car hire and hotels. Ryanair understand the internet and web visitor habits, they know that people want to find key information very quickly. We suspect that if an offline marketing expert had designed the Ryanair website it would have been a multi million euro video featuring high quality graphics and a video of well dressed air stewards strutting the flightdeck. The website functionality, such as 'flight search' would have been tucked out of the way to avoid destroying the 'brand identity'.
 This isnt an argument to design scruffy websites, but is grounds for hotels to stop focussing resources solely on web design, although we welcome deep pocketed hotels (rare enough nowadays) who want to spend large sums of money on web design, we actually try to get them to refocus that money on online marketing. We would argue that it is entirely possible nowadays to obtain a good website FOC. In fact our top earning Euro Zone customer uses a free website from WordPress, however, one with well thought out content. For example the Booking Facility is clear and integrated in to the website, a front page map shows the location of the property, the photography focuses on local landmarks and attractions, and the text is well written with appropriate keywords. By contrast many hotels will focus just on their own property forgetting to indicate clearly where they are located, some hotels even waste very valuable webpage space with close up shots of a plate of food. We can never remember anyone walking in to our office and saying 'I saw a lovely website last night, it was blue with hints of green.......'. No, but we do have people coming in saying 'i got a cheap flight last night....' or 'i saw a great holiday online last night....'.
Web customers want useful products and information, and quickly.
Another useful analogy we heard from a (long forgotten) Conference Speaker was to see your hotel as a Radio Antennae sending out signals and communicating with your customers. But are you doing that or simply focussing on your look and feel? For example, how often are you;
- Sending E Zines to your customers?
- Sending SMS Messages to your customers?
- Posting Messages/Events on the Website?
- Adding Messages to FaceBook (With A FanBox on your website)
- Adding Messages to Twitter
If you arent doing any of the above, then your radio antennae and customer communication are switched off.
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