Return to article listNo Generic Sunsets, Please!
An Online Strategy for Luxury Hospitality Brands
While we all like to think of ourselves as unique, most of us settle for vanilla now and then. The sophisticated upscale traveler, on the other hand, has the high expectations—and the financial wherewithal—to seek out experiences that resonate with a sense of being special and unique. The last thing a purveyor of luxury accommodations wants to appear to this discriminating guest is—yawn—generic.
And yet, many hoteliers who lavish unstinting care on every last amenity, from thread count to salad fork, neglect a crucial part of their public face: their Internet presence. They settle for a ho-hum website—a few pretty pictures and a booking engine—and squander the chance to make a unique, memorable, and alluring impression on the discriminating traveler.
The Internet’s impact on our industry is hard to overstate. A July 9, 2008 article on eMarketer.com, “Online Reviews Sway Shoppers,” noted that a whopping 82% of survey respondents researched travel and leisure destinations online. The proliferation of travel blog and review sites escalates the competition to capture the armchair traveler’s attention by winning the most coveted spots at the top of search engine result lists.
A Template for Success?
The response of many website design firms has been to create hospitality website templates that use a pre-determined formula of keywords, search engine optimization techniques, and booking engine technology to create an efficient, high-tech web presence.
But the problem with formulaic templates is just that—they’re formulaic. A unique, high-end hospitality property, that has long and lovingly cultivated an individual brand identity, can undermine that precious asset by presenting a cookie-cutter website design. For a luxury brand, it’s not enough to compete for the attention of a broad swathe of web surfers. A successful website has to forge a connection—emotional as well as practical—with the sophisticated, upscale traveler looking for a special experience.
A little poetry is in order. A sense of intimacy. And no generic palm-trees-in-the-sunset photos, please.
Beauty and a Backbone
Don’t be misled by those soft-and-fuzzy words like “poetry” and “intimacy.” It takes precision, experience, and a lot of work to study a hotel or resort property, identify the qualities that constitute its brand, distill that brand essence into a design approach, and find just the right combination of words, images, and structure to concoct an enticingly poetic, intimate portrayal of the brand experience.
Needless to say, all the technology imperatives and marketing devices that are built into the one-size-fits-all templates—such as search engine optimization and interactive booking engine—are just as important to the individually-crafted, high-touch website. Luxury properties need a site with both beauty and a backbone; ineffable charm must still translate to higher conversion rates.
Look for the Right Stuff
Therefore, when it’s time to create or upgrade a web presence, look for a design firm that boasts the skills and experience needed to represent your property beautifully and effectively—skills such as these:
Background in high-profile branding and positioning: It’s an art, a science, and a practice—not a guessing game.
Taste: A good designer is a bit like an art curator, choosing just the right themes and details for your online “gallery.” Does the design firm’s portfolio resonate with your own taste? Do you have confidence in the firm’s style and sensibility?
Technical know-how: Your site must engage in fierce competition for attention and customer satisfaction. Does your design firm come armed with up-to-the-minute tech savvy?
Global perspective: In-depth knowledge of the luxury hospitality market around the world is a requisite; your website must appeal to a global clientele.
Personal, on-site attention: Your design agency should get to know you and your property very well—and that can’t be accomplished with email and phone calls.
Trend awareness: It’s your creative team’s job to be constantly aware of new ideas and zeitgeist shifts—so you don’t have to be.
Results: Let’s see some stats. Your website is an investment that should make a quantifiable return.
Concocting Desire
There is, after all, something difficult to pin down about a great hospitality website. It’s not simply selling a product, or pitching a service, or offering an accommodation. Its job is to concoct desire—the desire to be part of a unique experience, the desire to see oneself reflected in a magnificent setting, the desire to click the button on the Reservations page. The more discriminating the visitor, the harder it is to evoke that desire.
Don’t waste the opportunity.