How to Build a Great Hotel Website

5 Tips for Building a Great Hotel Website

December 23, 2021 7:30am Robyn Rivera

Whether someone hears about your hotel in a Google search or a recommendation from a friend, the first thing they do before calling you to book their stay is to visit your website. If your hotel website isn’t up to par, the chances that they will follow through and reserve a room are slim to none.

Not just any hotel website will do. You need a website that will encourage visitors to convert into guests. That means that you need a great hotel website. Keep reading to learn tips on how to build one.

How to build a great hotel website

#1. Use professional, high-quality images

When I’m looking for a place to stay, the first thing I look for on a hotel’s website is the pictures. I want to know if the rooms look nice, how clean the hotel looks and what the lobby looks like.

You can — and should — have descriptions on your website of your hotel lobby, rooms, cleanliness standards and more, but descriptions alone won’t be enough to convince your website visitors to give you a chance.

Never rely on stock photos for your hotel website, or even lower-quality photos of your actual rooms and hotel. Hire a professional to take high-quality photos. You can use them on your website, in your ads and throughout your marketing materials.

#2. Have a modern, mobile-friendly website

Most of the time, when someone is looking for a great place to stay, they’re not using a desktop or laptop computer. They’re using their smartphone or another mobile device. In fact, you can expect most of your visitors to be mobile users.

If you want your website to be successful, you need to build it with mobile users in mind. That starts with choosing a responsive hotel website design template, which will automatically reconfigure itself for the best experience for the device being used.

You should also keep mobile users in mind by leaving plenty of space around buttons and other clickable elements. And, when you make changes to your hotel website, always test them out on a mobile device to ensure they look good and function properly on mobile.

#3. Choose a minimalist design

When someone lands on your hotel website, you want the first impression they come away with to be that you’re professional. If they don’t, the likelihood that they’ll choose you for their stay is slim to none.

One of the best ways to paint a picture of professionalism is to choose a simple, minimalist design for your website. This is best accomplished by using plenty of white space — or empty space — around important elements.

Keep in mind that white space isn’t always white. It can be any color, pattern or even an image, like in the example above. The point of white space is to avoid cramming too much information and too many elements into each section of your website.

If you have more information you want to share or more elements you want to include, consider making your page longer or adding more pages to your website instead of putting it all in one place.

#4. Showcase testimonials

Many hotel websites have things in common. For example, most hotels make claims about how clean they are, how nice their rooms are, how great their staff is, etc. — so much so that it can be difficult for consumers to sort through all the noise.

One of the best ways to break through the noise and stand out in the mind of your website visitors is to let your guests speak for you. Instead of saying that you’re the best, showcase testimonials of your guests saying it.

What you say about your hotel on your website matters a whole lot less than what past guests have to say about it. So, let them do the talking. You’ll build a lot more trust and convert a lot more website visitors into guests with reservations.

#5. Have a simple navigation

Your visitors may come to your hotel website for all kinds of reasons. Some people are just in research mode and want to see what you have to offer. Other visitors are looking for more specific information, like what your amenities are or how to book a room.

The easier you make it for your visitors to find the information they’re looking for, the more likely they are to stay on your website and book a reservation. That means that you need a simple, easy-to-use website navigation system.

A basic, menu-style navigation, as shown above, is your best bet when building your hotel website. Most internet users are familiar with this kind of navigation system and will know how to use it.

Every hotel needs a great hotel website. I hope these tips will help you build one! Start building a conversion-based hotel website with the Websites 360® website builder today.