4 Content Management Tips to Boost Bookings
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. For many of your guests, an online channel such as your website or an online travel agency (OTA) is the first point of contact with your product. This makes it all the more important that you maintain these digital flagships and keep them updated and engaging. Managing this content, whether it’s a description of your facilities or images and videos of your rooms, is called content management.
To help you optimise your room descriptions and generate more bookings with less effort, content management expert Mara de Cillia shares her tips in this article!
Maras Content Management Tips at a Glance:
1. Keep your information accurate and up to date
2. Tailor content to the season
3. Ensure you use attractive, high quality imagery
4. Maintain brand consistency across all channels
1. Keep your information accurate and up to date
When you’ve entered all your room and hotel details, is that it? Unfortunately, content management is not as simple as that. You need to keep all descriptions of room categories, facilities, location and special offers up to date and accurate on the relevant OTAs (online travel agencies). This will build trust with your potential guests and minimise uncertainty.
In particular, check regularly that information that changes from time to time is current: For example, are your breakfast times still correct on all platforms and your website? Clear communication also helps manage guest expectations. For example, announcing the construction site outside the hotel will allow guests to prepare and you to avoid annoyance and unpleasant surprises.
2. Tailor content to the season
Leverage the power of imagery: For example, if you have a leisure hotel in the Scotish Highlands, show pictures of hiking in summer and pictures of cosy winter landscapes with snow and winter activities in winter. By focusing on the correct season, you will inspire your guests and positively influence their booking decisions.
For our partner hotels, our content team alternates between winter and summer photos on all booking platforms every six months. But it’s not just the view that’s seasonal: you can also include seasonal opening times, such as your pool or activities on offer.
3. Ensure you use attractive, high quality imagery
Only high quality visual material can represent a high quality product. Showcase your hotel’s uniqueness with appealing photos and videos and positively influence the booking decision of potential guests, which, apart from price, is mainly determined by visual elements. Depending on whether your hotel caters more to business travellers or leisure guests, you should choose the focus of your visual material. For business travellers, for example, you could show the ironing board in the room or details of the conference rooms, while for leisure travellers you could capture the atmosphere and focus on the spa area.
Invest in a professional: a photographer experienced in hotel photography will pay attention to light and its effects, retouching cables or unwanted reflections. Make a note of the resolution of the images you need for the different platforms and ask directly for the appropriate formats. However, if you don’t have professional photos (yet), try to use photos you have taken yourself with a good smartphone or camera before posting them on the booking channels. Stock photos are immediately recognised by most people and give the impression that you are trying to “hide” the actual hotel.
4. Maintain brand consistency across all channels
Brands are instantly recognisable and evoke emotions. To create or maintain a brand identity for your hotel, it is necessary to standardise text, images and the communication of offers. This starts with using the same logo and design across all booking channels.
Beyond these more obvious brand elements, however, a consistent approach to potential guests is also important: how you express yourself (in writing), the words you use to describe your rooms – the so-called “voice and tone design” – should also be consistent across all channels. You can also create recognition value with your images by using a recognisable but consistent style. This should be reflected not only in the booking channels, but also in your (social media) marketing.
As you can see, it is all in the details when it comes to optimising your online presence on booking platforms. These subtleties of communication can ensure that potential guests choose your hotel over your competitor based on an unconscious gut feeling. However, the effort required for professional content management should not be underestimated.
If you need any support with this, and with your revenue management, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!
Mara de Cillia and the HotelPartner Team
