The digital landscape is fiercely competitive when it comes to hotels. Nowadays, excellent amenities and a great location won’t cut it if potential guests do not have an easy way to book with you. This is why having a seamless booking and browsing experience on your website is crucial—not only to compete with other hotels in your area but also to compete with OTAs. Luckily, with no-code tools, building a hotel website that is optimised and mobile-friendly can now be a quick and budget-friendly project.
A decade ago, Crystal Hotels built their original website in close to 6 months—through email correspondence and with no one-on-one training that would enable them to have control over their own website. Now, after building their new, fresh website in just 3 weeks with Hotelchamp eCommerce, Lenka Baffour, Crystal Hotels’ Marketing Manager said that it was worlds apart with Hotelchamp.
What challenge were Crystal Hotels facing?
Crystal Hotels is a collection of small hotels centrally located in London's Bayswater and Kensington districts. Being located in some of London’s most sought-after areas, the Crystal Hotels properties are highly attractive for travellers looking for a getaway in London. However, their outdated website and undefined user journey seemed to be keeping them away from achieving their potential. Looking for a fresh, more attractive and user-friendly website, Crystal Hotels was determined to create a seamless booking experience for their potential guests.
However, getting a new website used to come at a great cost for hoteliers. Small hotels like the Crystal Hotels properties need budget-friendly options when it comes to website design. “We were after the large [photo] galleries, a fast-loading website, and something which is cost-effective for a small hotel like us. There were many different providers on the market at that time, but all were very expensive for small hotels,” says Lenka Baffour, Marketing Manager at Crystal Hotels.
How did Hotelchamp help?
After reading favourable reviews, following the advice of other hoteliers in the industry and years of reading Hotelchamps newsletters and advice on increasing direct bookings, Crystal Hotels decided to choose Hotelchamp eCommerce to build their new website. “[Hotelchamp] was the only available tool on the market that ticked most of our boxes,” says Baffour. Aside from the beautiful templates built with hoteliers in mind, Hotelchamp’s support and expertise were invaluable. “I had a lot of one-on-one, face-to-face training, which we didn't have with the previous provider before, so the whole team was very supportive,” says Crystal Hotels’ Marketing Manager. On top of that, with great support from our conversion specialists, Crystal Hotels found ways to showcase their hotels and the local neighbourhood in a favourable light.
In only 3 weeks, Crystal Hotels’ new chain website and 3 hotel websites were up and running. In addition to their new website, Crystal Hotels was excited to start using the tools available with their Convert package in order to increase the conversion on their website. Particularly, they are enjoying their Price Comparison Tool which compares the direct rate with that of OTA’s, showing the benefits of booking on the direct channel.
What was the outcome for Crystal Hotels?
Crystal Hotels now have new opportunities they didn’t know existed. Their new website has given them more control over the guest experience “[the websites] are user-friendly on the back end and for the guests, (...) if we want to change the template, we can do so very quickly”, says Baffour. With “much more attractive websites, more customisation and a seamless booking experience”, Crystal Hotels are excited to explore more ways to increase their number of direct bookings with Hotelchamp’s conversion tools—and Hotelchamp is eager to support. “There are always options with Hotelchamp. Support is always on things, I do enjoy working with [Hotelchamp] very much,” says Lenka Baffour.
Click here to find out how we can help your hotel to build a new website or contact us via live chat or at welcome@hotelchamp.com.
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