If you are not on mobile, you should be. If you don’t have a mobile-friendly site, with its own booking channel, it’s time to take the plunge, and invest into developing one. If your hotel is not included on travel apps, you will soon be struggling, outrun by competitors with savvier mobile marketing strategies.
According to data by travel research authority PhoCusWright, by 2015 mobile travel bookings will more than triple, reaching $39.5 million. OTAs are already fighting for supremacy, launching user friendly apps for all platforms. But OTAs are not the only channels to be considered by hotels.Ideally, they should strive to be included on travel sharing apps like Stay.com, JetSetter, TripWolf and others.
Mobile travel bookings counted for only 2% in 2011, but they are expected to reach one quarter of the U.S. online travel market in 2015. Not being prepared to compete on this market is wasted opportunity.
A cost effective way to prepare for the future is WIHP Convert, part of the WIHP Premium ecosystem, a hotel marketing solution, designed and managed by expert consultants, using an ecosystem of marketing tools with proven ROI.
The immersive experience offered by Convert gives independent hotels a state-of-the-art hotel website based on full-screen imagery and galleries otherwise only available to multi-million dollar websites. The sites work on all supported media, including desktops and all portable devices (iPhone, iPad, smartphones).
Convert is the ideal fusion of booking engine and website in one easy to use, quick, and informative package. Where guests used to spend 11 minutes on the booking engine and 14 minutes on the website before, on Convert guests can reduce that to much less than 14 minutes.
Hotels that integrate the booking engine within their websites are common, but a hotel site that delivers as fast as Convert, is where WIHP’s hard work has paid off. The developers strived to make selecting a room on the site and the booking engine, essentially the same thing. The end result is remarkable.
Convert is available from WIHP as a subscription plan of 750 EUR a month and is purchased online at www.wihphotel.com/convert building the website is essentially done online with a support team available to answer questions and help hoteliers through the process.
Featured image source: © Maksym Dykha – Fotolia.com
