Every website we browse, every topic we research, we get shown a lot of information and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Your guests have this same experience too. It is so important that your potential guests find the information they’re looking for at a glance. By having the right information easily accessible for them, your website conversion rate will be positively impacted.
In this case study, we’ll look at how clearly communicating the right information on your website impacts conversion rates and turns someone who is browsing your page into a paying guest. We’ll share with you how one of our customers, Royal Crescent Hotel, has successfully done this.
What challenges was Royal Crescent Hotel facing?
Especially during the COVID-19 lockdowns, it was pertinent for hotels to have up-to-date information on their homepage. This information could range from flexible booking policies, rules and regulations around the hotel, countrywide procedures, mandatory quarantines—you name it! Often, we found that it was difficult for hoteliers to decide on where to place this information so that travellers weren’t overwhelmed or confused—but also to maintain the security travellers were feeling in the process of booking their next destination. This was also the experience that Royal Crescent Hotel had, so we worked together on a strategy to help address this.
How did Hotelchamp help Royal Crescent Hotel?
1. Reducing user friction by highlighting relevant information
Who hasn't found themselves in the situation before when browsing a website, wanting to quickly find a particular piece of information you are searching for but rather than finding what you were looking for, you spent ages scrolling up and down and switching from one page to the next? Travellers are choosing between a lot of options; countries, cities, hotels. Comparing all of these has to be fast and easy.
For Royal Crescent Hotel, we used our Docked Bar interaction to clearly promote three of their strongest direct booking benefits. This template sits at the top or bottom of the screen which doesn’t distract from what is happening on the page but creates a strong message with a highly visible call-to-action button.
If you want to apply this to your hotel, you could create geotargeted versions of this to show relevant information to different guests based on where they are located. A local visitor might be looking for information on parking facilities, early check-in and late checkout, and nearby attractions. Someone travelling from overseas, might find other information more relevant—is there a COVID test centre close by, is breakfast included and is there a spa facility in the hotel? With the use of geo-targeting, the information on your page caters to the needs of that guest. Geo-targeting only scrapes the surface of personalisation and this principle can also be applied to other characteristics of your guests:
- Guest personas: Families, solo travellers, business travellers.
- Stay days: weekends, weekdays
- Their interests: did they browse your F&B page before, your events page, or maybe your wellness landing page?
Using all of this information to set up messaging, ensures that there is no overwhelm in information but rather clear and concise messaging.
2. Focus on decreasing traveller uncertainty
A second key point in our strategy with Royal Crescent Hotel was focussing on building guest confidence. Despite more people travelling now and this trend still being on the rise, many individuals are still worried about what happens in case of another lockdown, or other unforeseen events. Communicating relevant information such as flexible cancellation policies, COVID test centres in close proximity, and hygiene measures within the hotel, can boost the confidence of the traveller, making it more likely for them to complete the booking.
What results did Royal Crescent Hotel see?
The Docked Bar interaction implemented by Royal Crescent Hotel generated over €30K in direct revenue over a 3-month period. It also had strong engagement, demonstrating relevance to travellers, with a click-through rate of 7.13%.
It's true what they say—communication is key. Clear and relevant messaging on your website ensures that your website visitors have an enjoyable experience browsing through your website—finding the information that is relevant to them and consequently booking directly.
If you want to learn more about how you could also get closer to your guests and increase your hotel’s direct bookings, contact us through live chat or send us a message at welcome@hotelchamp.com.
Stay tuned for our interview with Mary Stringer, from Royal Crescent Hotel in the coming weeks to hear more insights from her. Hear how the last year has been, what her biggest takeaways are and how the partnership with Hotelchamp has helped Royal Crescent Hotel achieve its goals.
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