Hospitality website design
What are critical requirements for a guesthouse website?
- Search engine visibility - in the hospitality industry, guests mostly use the internet to find accommodation in a given area.
- Easy to use booking form and clearly visible contact information.
- A picture says a thousand words - probably nothing can sell your establishment like high quality photographs, giving the potential guest a clear indication of where he or she will stay.
- Up to date information, and a CMS that enables you as owner to add new content to your website.
Professional or Personal image?
Different types of establishments need to convey different messages to the potential guest through their site. Take www.sunsetchalets.co.za as an example of a site through which a relaxed personal atmosphere is conveyed. The establishment handles and gets to know all guests on a personal level, which is why you'll find a picture of the owner and his wife on the site. On the other end of the spectrum, www.cbhc.co.za gives a much more corporate and professional feel - which as a boutique hotel in Bloemfontein, is the kind of service they provide.
You need a developer who can let your potential guests feel comfortable with the service you will provide, within a couple of seconds of browsing your website.
Picture galleries and Slideshows
Your developer should build an easy to use CMS that will enable you to easily upload pictures into galleries and/or slideshows onto your website. Our CMS enables uploading of multiple pictures at once with the click of a button. All pictures are automatically resized and/or scaled into the perfect dimensions for web related purposes.
Booking notifications
Guests appreciate prompt replies to their enquiries, therefore our CMS automatically sends you an SMS and an email as soon as a booking request or enquiry is made through your site. A potential guest will usually send enquiries to a couple of establishments in the area and they'll usually stay at the establishment that replies first - our instant notification system gives you the edge in a competitive environment.
Add pages to your site
Most establishments have special events from time to time, with our CMS you can easily add a special page for that event, and just remove it after the event has passed. Take the 2010 soccer world cup as an example - you need to create a page informing the world of your ability to host guests during the event. Our CMS makes this a seamless process - if you can type in MS Word, you have more than enough skills to create your own page.
Contact us today for a free, no obligation quote on a website solution that will take your accommodation establishment into the future.