Today, a majority of hotel bookings have moved online. Even before entering your lobby, guests form an opinion of your hotel through the brand website. Therefore, your hotel website is a crucial asset when it comes to converting your website visitors into customers. Consequently, the visual elements, mainly images & videos, on your hotel website have the potential to create a lasting impression and evoke emotions that can lead to direct bookings. We have already covered ‘What makes a great video for a hotel website?’ in our previous blog. Today, we will discuss what images work best for a hotel website.

Banner Image

The banner image is the first thing website visitors see when they land on your hotel website. They should highlight your unique selling propositions (USPs). For instance, if you own a beachfront resort, the focus of the creative should be on its stunning shoreline and the luxurious experience. For a city hotel, the lobby’s elegance and the urban-centric ambience can be the showstopper. You should think about what story you want to convey to your guests. A good idea is to feature at least 4-7 highly curated images that showcase your hotel’s best features. Each image should contribute to the overall storytelling and entice the visitor to explore further. Along with the USPs, these visuals could include shots of the hotel’s various room categories, amenities, dining options, and more.

If you run a hotel chain and you have a newly launched property or one that has undergone significant renovations, the banner image or video can be utilised to announce this exciting news. This will create the necessary buzz and attract attention from potential guests eager to experience the new and improved offerings.

Room Images

For different categories of rooms (e.g., suite, deluxe, standard, et al.), ensure that the visuals help differentiate each room category. You should also include pictures of the bathroom for each room category, although they might be harder to shoot.

Common Facilities

It’s best practice to include at least one visual of each of your hotel’s common facilities, such as the gym, restaurants, and bars. These images portray the overall experience guests can expect when using these amenities.

Additionally, if your hotel offers banquet services, it’s a great idea to include images of the banquet hall set up in various configurations. Pictures depicting different seating arrangements (cluster, U-shaped, etc.) will help potential customers envision their events taking place in the hotel.

Optimising Images on your Hotel Website

High-Quality Images & Videos

We suggest investing in professional photography to capture the hotel’s essence in the best possible way. Also, ensure that your images are shot on landscape as they work well for desktops.

Reusable Assets

The second step is to organise all your hotel’s images into easily accessible folders or a shareable drive. This way, they can be readily used across the website, in marketing materials, and even if you decide to switch your website design provider.
 

Choose the Right Hotel Website Provider

A good hotel website provider, like Simplotel, will ensure that your website images are delivered seamlessly to your visitors. These are a few factors to consider while selecting your provider:

• Mobile-Responsiveness - Today, nearly 80% of Internet traffic is through mobile phones. Therefore, at Simplotel we automate this process and ensure that all your images, and even videos, are optimised for mobile devices.

• Fast Load Time - Load time is one of the most important elements in hotel e-commerce and is also a crucial factor for ranking on Google. Online studies reveal that 40% of website visitors abandon a website if the webpage takes more than three seconds to load. Therefore, it is essential to compress your images without compromising on quality to maintain a fast-loading website. Simplotel’s content management system (CMS) does this automatically for you!

• Captions & Alt-Text - Descriptive captions and alt-text for your images will help improve accessibility and also allow search engines to better crawl and rank your website on Google. Simplotel’s Digital Marketing team does this for you!

• Displaying Call-to-Action (CTA) Elements Prominently - CTA elements, like buttons or hyper-linked texts, boost the probability of converting your website visitors into customers. Simplotel helps you to incorporate CTAs strategically around your images to prompt website visitors to take the desired action, such as booking a room or exploring special offers.

To conclude, your hotel website is your virtual lobby and should be treated with the same level of attention and care. Compelling images, informative videos & great content are the keys to engaging website visitors and driving more direct bookings.