I’ve a favourite analogy about hotels and how they ought to look at their website and web-based marketing and advertising initiatives; it usually strikes a nerve pretty close to home. Imagine if you published one thousand beautiful, four color, ten page brochures that amazingly grabbed the unique nature of your resort at ten dollars a piece…then secured them away in a cupboard…how effective would they be? Or how about creating SEO firm Raleigh of direct mail that is certainly riveting, stimulating and really worth a Pulitzer Prize…and then never delivering it out? About now you need to be feeling very, very guilty…not about these 500 brochures nevertheless left in your cupboard (oops!), but about not driving your website hard enough.
Creating a great website without Search Engine Optimisation is equivalent to these pamphlets or that immediate postal mail item; regardless of how interesting the words or how spectacular the dynamic images, if no-one can find your internet site while they are searching online for your “luxurious San Diego, Ca hotel”, that “romantic B&B outdoors Paris” or that “journey scuba vacation in the Maldives”, then you have lost your hard earned money. Not only that, but the wise competitors has now optimised their site and they are reaping the benefits; and also you are lacking those rewards.
What benefits I hear you may well ask? My last article obtained an amazing response from the industry (well, more than 100 emails anyhow…I’ve just finished answering the last couple of today)…some truly asking for help, which I am constantly happy to try and provide, but more than a few had been saying “Show me the amount of money!”.
And it’s a fair call. So, this week we refined up a few Case Research on Hotel Search Engine Optimisation projects we have recently completed and published these on our website for everyone to find out.
To tell the truth, we picked a few the very best types for your Case Studies but when we looked at a range of sites we have worked with over the last calendar year, the outcomes happen to be really pleasing overall…and those resorts continue to be our customers which, when invoicing time arrives around every month, is definitely the ultimate check of client devotion.
In Case Study One, we selected a older 4 star internal town hotel with well over 400 rooms, substantial conference and events services and several meals and drink outlets. They had a “older” website that had been upgraded to include a Content Management system 5 months earlier but they hadn’t done a lot along with it. Via using practical Resort Search Engine Optimisation techniques, immediate online revenues greater than tripled in 90 days…conference and events on the internet inquiries quadrupled with product sales conversions occurring with a staggering 75.Percent…apparently, when conference organizers enquire online, they are prepared to book!
The hotel invested $9,000 more than 3 months and it has because increased annualised online revenues by a conservative $420,000 but still climbing…you desired Return on investment? With a conservative 3.8% of incremental revenues, this is a remarkable outcome.
For Case Study Two, we considered a recently reconditioned, 5 star coastal resort resort with roughly 90 rooms and maintained apartments; additionally they provide conference space and breakout areas to suit small to medium upscale seminars and corporate coaching. The cost right here was actually a small tighter so we centered on boosting their premium “intimate weekend get away” market. Via our preliminary research, we also learned they had accepted some terrific, premium corporate clients through the previous year that had also purchased team developing and connecting packages from local providers (The facts that makes the complete professional board of any company want to jump from an absolutely great plane with just a bit of cloth packed in a bag within the interests of team connecting?). We sought to capitalise with this information, creating dedicated webpages on the site to show off nearby suppliers for journey/group building routines and showcased these in the resort website home page.
You want measurability in your marketing? Each and every day the homeowner of this resort logs into see his website statistics and it is now able to associate alterations in Distinctive Visits and online enquiries to future product sales trends. Unique Visits for their website grew from 1,000 to in excess of 4,000 per month, meeting leads have tripled and “value added” team building sales quadrupled…and high quality “weekend break escape” packages doubled even after a 30Percent price increase! Ah, the wonders of yield administration and dynamic pricing!
So, does Resort Search Engine Optimisation really work? Indeed…and no. SEO will deliver traffic, leads and sales prospects…but it nevertheless requires the hotel to get responsive, attractive and listed to meet (or slightly surpass) the marketplace. If both you and your group can react to online inquiries same day, deliver an exciting experience with truth rboxug suits the customers encounter on the web and at a cost which offers authentic value for money, then Hotel Search Engine Optimisation is for you.
And make sure you understand…this channel is no longer the place to put cheap, last moment inventory; it will be the location to wisely invest your scarce marketing and advertising dollars for optimum ROI. Both in these Case Studies, the web channel is currently their greatest yielding supply of company.