Change the way guests are booking your properties.
Online Marketing is evolving at a fast pace which can be overwhelming when holiday managers are busy looking after their guests and owners. We can show you how to keep up to date with the latest Digital strategies to continue to compete with Owner direct accommodation, local competitors and Online Travel Agents (OTA). Travellers are becoming savvy with their travel spends when booking their next getaway, therefore since Covid there is a significant increase in direct bookings. We can show you how your direct bookings marketing investment will bring greater returns.
Review your current website design and guest booking journey
Is your current website ready for a new look and booking experience? If your website is more than 3 years old with no updates during this time, your booking journey needs to be reviewed. Websites need to be maintained with updates on a monthly basis to keep your business relevant, interesting and exciting.
Challenge yourself by imaging you are a first time visitor to your website. Ask yourself, does the homepage inspire you to look for a holiday property, is the journey easy to navigate and is your website promoting your services to your guests and owners? Does your location and property imagery inspire and captive your attention? Do you promote a “best price guarantee” on your website to increase user engagement to book direct and save?
If you have answered no to any of these questions, our Web Design and Digital Marketing Experience team can change your business within 4 weeks to start a new journey for your visitors to book directly and increase your conversions.
A highly functional website that is designed with guest intention and performs on any mobile device is high priority. If your website is not mobile responsive in 2022, Google will decrease your rankings significantly to other sites that are designed to modern standards.
If your website takes more than 30 seconds to navigate, you have lost the interest of the user and they will move to another site. They might love your property but will book through another channel to achieve faster results.
Change the way your guests make a booking on your website, create a journey that will make the experience simple and easy.
Employ Direct Marketing
To encourage direct bookings ensure you have permission to market to guests who have stayed or enquired with you previously. Studies have shown that targeted email marketing campaigns remain highly effective to increase online bookings at minimal expense.
It is surprising that more than half of the short term holiday accommodation businesses do not send regular newsletters to promote their property portfolio and destination as marketing opportunity after departure.
Encourage guests to share their experience to unlock discounts for future stays or referrals to family and friends.
Success of your campaign is determined by creative, fun and engagement with content ideas to stimulate interest. Professional newsletter systems like Mail Chimp are free (up to 2,000 emails per contacts) and are easily trackable.
Our newsletter system is built into our website technology to incorporate holiday listings that are connected to your website for easier booking journeys and online payments.
Target your Social Media Followers
Social media channels Facebook and Instagram are great advertising platforms to increase traffic back to your website to encourage direct bookings with special offers via these channels. Our websites offer promotion codes to be added to track the success of the campaign.
“Thank you to all our loyal Facebook fans, book one of our properties in June and receive a 10% discount. Promo code Facebook21 via our website. *Terms & Conditions apply”
OTA’s may have a huge monopoly on the online accommodation sector however by investing in your website direct bookings will grow. Contact us to discuss how we can help you maximise your visitor experience online.
