16 Jan Luxury Hotel Web Design Ideas To Implement In 2017

2017 is here and we’ve had a long year of marketing in the luxury hotel sector with a record number of web design renovations for clients both old and new. Spending big dollars at a luxury hotel is what their guests do and making sure your hotel is getting those customers instead of the competition isn’t an easy task.

What IS important is how your hotel website portrays the dream you’re trying to sell; as we all know, emotions drive purchases. Your website is usually where it all happens, even if the user started out on Google or found your beautiful luxury hotel via Instagram. What matters is how the first impression is creating an impact and ultimately driving sales.

I’m still shocked at the number of downright terrible websites in the hotel sector. It seems a lot of hotel brands are scared to spend and we’ll leave them out of the discussion for now. If you’re actively keeping up with trends and willing to try something new then read on, this post is for you.

Modern Luxury Hotel Website Features

I’m going to be talking about what you can add to your current website to bring more value to potential customers and help excite them into hitting that booking page. Sit down with your design team and see what they think, or give us a shout and we’d be happy to talk in depth to make these situations become a reality on your hotel website.

We are going to cover everything from ideas that cost very little to implement, all the way up to ideas that might make your luxury hotel a first in its area. The latter is something we’re always more excited about because it more than often leads to people talking about your hotel, and in the end that’s the ultimate goal.

Showcase Influencers Who Stayed At Your Hotel

Tip: This is an easy thing to do for even the most novice of web developers and, depending on your website’s framework (WordPress, Drupal, custom), can be implemented in an hour or less. What we recommend is to get a collection of pictures from real people who have stayed at your hotel and embed them either on the specific room’s page, or showcase a general feed of past customers.

Result: Your customers can see themselves being the influencer and being inspired to think about what their stay would be like. In addition, millennials love to show off.  It is a force that you can sort of harness to use to your advantage.

Virtual Reality Hotel Tours

Tip: Virtual Reality is a thing. It’s here and it’s pretty amazing already even though this is just the beginning. The technology is relatively affordable to implement and most luxury hotels should have a marketing budget that will allow for it. You can show off the best features of your hotel and let people get inspired to come visit in a much more immersive means than would be afforded by a normal video or picture.

Result: Allowing potential customers to take a tour of what they could be staying in will only further the lust for their vacation. If you’re the only hotel offering the service, it’s going to cause a lot of winning. Doing something this amazing also warrants a press outreach campaign that will more than likely result in coverage online and off.

Mobile Friendly Is Going To Be Key

Mobile traffic levels have already taken over desktop searching in a lot of the world and the whole process for consumers should be quick and simple. We’re still seeing a ton of smaller brands and boutique luxury hotels way behind when it comes to mobile websites.

Tip: Speed and a clean website is what’s going to keep the user on and push sales. If you’ve got a cluttered desktop website, it’s going to be a rough year. The hotel industry -more than others- will see higher rates of mobile traffic simply because their clientele won’t be carrying a computer. Similarly, if your site doesn’t load fast enough, uses too much data, or is at all confusing, you may just lose a lot of mobile sales.

You’ll want to sit down with your web dev team and figure out where mobile users are going on your website and then come up with a completely new design for mobile from the ground up. Responsive design is great, but a lot of the elements you load for a 1080p desktop are going to be overkill for a handheld device.

Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) Project is an open source initiative that allows publishers the ability to code sites that load FAST! If you’re in the habit of trying to rank for keywords, doing it on mobile without AMP pages in 2017 is going to be tough.

All that said, do try and keep the experience of visiting your website on mobile an experience. Just because you want a light and simple site doesn’t mean it can’t have the brand’s personality imbued into the user’s experience.

Luxury Hotel Web Design Help

If you’re looking to do something unique and fresh with your website this year then don’t hesitate to get in touch with our design team. We’re looking to work with luxury hotels that want to go above and beyond their competition and provide a web experience their clients won’t get anywhere else.

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