In a competitive and crowded marketplace, it’s so important that travel brands get their content strategies right. Every word that a potential guest reads will help them decide where they want to stay, which means that your hotel brand needs to cover a wide range of touchpoints.
Once you’ve brought your customers to you, your website content is where you really need to persuade. You’ve already caught their interest, so now it’s time to hold it. You want to persuade them why your brand is worth their time and money by deploying powerful visual and written content.
Here are a few hotel website content examples to showcase brands that are doing things the right way.
Ikos: For great photography
Ikos has made beautiful landscapes, aesthetic design and the luxury of complete relaxation a core element of the brand. You’ll see this reflected across the website, too.
The hotel brand has invested heavily in its photography, with incredible visuals for every element of the experience. They always put people at the heart of the action, showing families enjoying moments together rather than posing for the camera. It all helps transmit the relaxed, welcoming experience guests can expect at the resorts.
This guest-focused photography is complemented by zoomed-in images to showcase specific dishes and design elements, as well as wider images that showcase the natural beauty of each area. Look closely and you’ll also discern a very slightly different colour palette for each of the resorts.
Ikos has developed a distinctive and poetic tone of voice to reflect the elegance of the imagery the brand uses. For example, the page for Ikos Dassia, the resort located in Corfu, pulls out the unique attributes of the island with novelistic detail, supported by a variety of enticing and tangible images.
Palladium Group: For easy navigation
With a wide range of different hotel brands, the Palladium Hotel Group website could easily have been an overwhelming experience for the user. However, this is a brand that understands the importance of UX and has ensured that its website is smooth and easy to navigate.
You can search for hotels by dates, destinations or types, whether you’re looking for luxury, family-oriented stays, boutique hotels or city breaks. It’s also possible to search by a specific brand that is part of the Palladium Hotel Group, whether it’s ultra-modern urban Only YOU Hotels, adult-exclusive luxury TRS Hotels or Grand Palladium Hotels & Resorts for family fun. Each brand page is uniform in design, but the text and image content vary greatly depending on the type of audience that each brand wants to reach. The tone of voice reflects that of the target audience.
From the Palladium Hotel Group homepage, it’s also easy to find offers and discounts. This helps cross-pollinate across the brand. If there isn’t a special deal on the hotel you wanted, perhaps you may choose another from the Palladium family.
Marriott: For great information
Marriott International’s amazing blog, Marriott Bonvoy Traveller, helps the brand boost its Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) - the results pages when people use search engines to find information online. Its blog also helps to establish its status as a travel authority in a whole variety of destinations around the world.
It’s important for potential guests to view your brand as providing useful and relevant information, as it gives you credibility. Marriott Bonvoy’s blog offers inspiration for all types of travel, from road trips to weekend getaways, with useful destination guides filled with valuable tips and local trends.
It’s easy to see Marriott Bonvoy’s approach, breaking its content up into separate pillars, through a selection of blogs such as 6 of Europe’s Must-See Natural Wonders That Deliver on the ‘Wow’ Factor, 6 Ways Travelers Can Respect Local Wildlife and These 9 Palatial Hotels Royally Impress with Storybook Stays, demonstrating its diverse content coverage.
IHG: For a strong brand experience
The on-point branding of IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) makes it instantly recognisable and convincing. Upon visiting its website, you are greeted with captivating and bold content that places IHG and its hotel brands, including Regent, Kimpton and Crowne Plaza, as globally prominent entities. This approach is applied throughout its digital content strategy. Through the power of storytelling, IHG shows its value and creates a sense of aspiration. The way the InterContinental Hotels & Resorts brand is presented provides an insightful example. By deliberately showcasing its prestige and luxury, it presents itself as an aspirational product that people want to be a part of. You can see this in the introductory text on the brand homepage.
“InterContinental Hotels & Resorts has delighted luxury travellers since 1946, serving as a meeting place for heads of state, a setting for world-changing speeches, and the impetus for some of the most famous love stories of all time.”
Just reading that introduction makes you want to be a part of the brand.
Accor: For easy booking
With its content, Accor hopes to inspire convenience and ease of use in the minds of its audience. Prices, discounts and offers are displayed upfront and the destination or hotel search is the most visible feature of the homepage, which gives the user a sense of transparency. This is especially important when presenting a variety of well-known but diverse brands, such as mid-range Mercure and Novotel, luxury Sofitel and budget-friendly Ibis.
You can search easily by destination or accommodation type, offering more ways to browse for people who aren’t necessarily loyal to one specific brand. Accor’s partnerships with other brands for holiday features, such as car hire, also make planning your trip a more seamless and smooth experience.
A holiday is an expensive investment for the customer in terms of time and money. Ensuring that your brand is as clear and convenient as possible about the booking process, backed up by efficient customer service and easy reward tracking, serves to inspire confidence that this is a brand worth investing in.
Sani: For inspiring elegance
The elegance of Sani Resort carries across to its website. The brand relies on this luxury and elegance as a key selling point. The use of sophisticated typography, inspiring videos and soothing colour palettes helps even the most casual visitor fall in love with its resorts. The design is clean and minimalist, with small inspirational texts and an image-led look.
Once drawn in, the brand keeps the audience hooked with a smooth discovery process to explore the various hotel and suite options, augmented by compelling copy that converts leads into active customers. When a user takes the option to reserve a room, the booking experience is seamless and clear.
And here's what not to do
When it comes to hotel websites, providing a rich experience online is key in the battle against online travel agents (OTAs) like Booking.com.
With the right approach to their online presence, hotel brands have the opportunity to not only stand out from the competition but also encourage people to book directly and avoid the large fees paid to OTAs.
You don’t have to have the budget of Accor or IHG to perfect your website. You can look to them as examples and adopt elements you like. There are also some pitfalls you should avoid...
Visuals are so important in enticing customers to beautiful destinations and amazing hotel amenities, so choosing the wrong photos or showcasing poor-quality photography is a problem. Investing in crisp, high-quality images taken by a professional is a fantastic investment, and they can be applied across all areas of the brand.
Avoid inauthentic and irrelevant content. As a hotel brand, your key strategy is converting leads into sales, which means concise content. If in doubt, think short, sharp paragraphs filled with useful information, considering all the questions that a guest may ask or assessing the queries they ask most when calling your hotel.
Ensure that your homepage provides the answers to those questions, and that the content is positive and persuasive.
Don’t just go for the cheapest software. To ease the customer through the booking process with greater efficiency, the software you use for bookings is vital - so it’s worth the investment. The booking process is part of creating a positive user experience (UX), with a clear navigation process, no lagging and no annoying popups.
Don’t just leave the website up to team members without expertise. The clarity of your brand identity and values is essential, so that guests understand exactly the experience that awaits them. Visibility is key, so make sure your SEO strategy is robust and informed by experts. SEO will help new users discover your brand and what it offers, essentially bringing people to you.
Without continuous investment, SEO provides long-term benefits for your brand, generating traffic and leads and boosting your hotel website conversion rate. This, combined with captivating content and strong UX making the navigation and booking process as clear as possible, will inspire and engage your audience.
For all these reasons, a well-designed website is so important for your hotel brand.
To make sure you’re following a path towards a successful content strategy, consider the digital marketing services for hotels offered by Contese, supported by years of experience and expertise collaborating with some of the world’s biggest travel brands. We work with you and offer our expertise based on your business goals. In everything from content and SEO, to website design and development, we can help you.