Beautiful photography, enticing and descriptive language, artistic page transitions… Hotel and destination websites are great at conveying the “look and feel” of a brand through design. Which is why so many of them FAIL the digital marketing test.

Gorgeous design is essential, don’t get me wrong. A great hotel or resort website should absolutely give the user a sense of what it’s like to step into the lobby–the stunning visuals, the energy of the place, the atmospheric elements that distinguish it from competitors. But focusing primarily on design and branding, rather than how the website figures into a holistic digital marketing effort, is equivalent to pouring buckets of money into designing the staff restroom. Your paying audience will never see it.

I can’t tell you how often I visit the websites of upscale resorts, destination marketing associations, hotels, chambers of commerce and other travel and tourism industry folks to find a lovely website with very little usable (much less marketable!) information. The key to successful online marketing for hospitality and travel brands is CONTENT.

Fact:

• 95% of destination travelers use the Internet at some point to research travel
• 72% are using Search Engines to conduct online research
• 61% of active travelers say the use the Internet exclusively for travel research
• The average online consumer visits 15 sites 30 days before booking

By now, all travel marketing professionals should have a basic understanding of SEO, the process by which websites are made more visible to search engines in order to appear in relevant search results. Many brands have likely engaged an SEO professional at some point to clean up  HTML coding, optimize page copy and meta data (title tags, page description and keywords), and submit the site to search engine directories. But then the website is considered “finished” and no one touches it until the next redesign.

Just as bed linens wear out and the walls have to be constantly touched up, a hotel website needs constant maintenance to stay relevant. One irony that drives me nuts: Hotel companies will spend tens of thousands on “public relations” campaigns that are aimed almost entirely at securing media coverage, but then neglect to make the fabulous stories, promotions and newsy items concocted for the press easily visible on their own website!

The explosion of social media has upped the ante for travel marketers once again. Not only must a hotel website be dutifully updated on a weekly (if not daily) basis, it must also contain content valuable and relevant enough to compete with other online information sources. Review sites and social networks tell your potential guests what to expect, without the fluff and hyperbole we marketers like to use as window dressing. So, how can hotel websites compete?

• Drop the “corporate lingo” and be genuine–which doesn’t mean using slang or poor grammar. Just use straightforward, honest language to convey news, ideas and special offers
• Give guests a voice. Create a blog or forum where guests and staff can interact before, during and after a visit. Not only does user-generated content add credibility and transparency to your website, it also keeps your content fresh and relevant (remember SEO?)
• Market your content! Now you’ve got a great site with fresh content, a distinct voice and a geniune personality. Expect website traffic to come flooding in? Not so fast. Look at the big picture of the Internet and find ways to bring your content to your audiences.

More on the third point in future posts, but here is one tool travel brands can utilize to extend the reach of content and keep website visitors coming back.