LONDON—Anticipating guests’ needs and providing contextually relevant content are just two of the many issues hoteliers need to address when creating mobile- and tablet-optimized websites, according to sources during last month’s EyeforTravel Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2013.
Fairmont Raffles Hotels International recently rebuilt its platforms after the company experienced “exceptional growth” in traffic, according to Michael Innocentin, director of Internet marketing.
“The first thing you need to do is figure out what your customers want to do on your mobile site,” Innocentin said. “Have someone who can analyze the data, or create an advanced segment in Google Analytics. You can go back and see what pages are being visited and therefore what content is important to the mobile user.”
Fairmont’s research revealed its users were incredibly task-oriented.
“They are there for a purpose and want to do it quickly. Prioritize your landing pages with the correct task, such as ‘find a hotel,’ ‘make a reservation,’ ‘view offers.’ Often some of the things you believe will be a priority might not be at the top of the list,” he said.
Christoph Heyn of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company said hoteliers are missing the mark when it comes to communicating with guests pre-arrival via smartphone. The luxury hotel chain’s senior manager of global e-commerce and mobile strategy said technology allows hoteliers to start engaging guests from the time of booking.
“I don’t feel any large chains are doing this well at the moment,” Heyn said. “We have your location, we have your preferences, we have your future reservation plans and we know if you have booked a spa treatment. How can we get this together, run it through some algorithms and create the intent? It gives us great opportunities to do some targeted marketing. …
“Our company-wide goal is ‘guest engagement,’ as to us this is shown to be the key indicator as to what drives profit. So the question is how can mobile help drive this goal?”
Innocentin shared a similar sentiment, saying the next step is maximizing mobile content.
“It’s very frustrating to get to a mobile site and find they only have two or three pieces of content when I know their desktop site has a huge amount of information on it,” he said. “You need to supply as close as possible to the full set of content.”
That content needs to be easily navigable, Innocentin said.
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| Michael Innocentin |
"We have the brand level navigation, the property level, with several categories and activities and services. There is a lot of domestic content,” he said. “I find the challenge with one navigation bar you can get deep into the site but find you have no way of getting back.”
Innocentin recommended adding value with contextually relevant content—what he called “the holy grail of mobile.”
“Your smartphone knows more about you than your spouse, friends or colleagues. How do we tap into that to create a relevant experience for guests? Using geo-location is the best place to start. If we know you are at one of our properties, we give you different content: a resort map, dining options, the number for the front desk. At Fairmont we are really focusing on expanding these.”
Fairmont’s research also showed that mobile phones and tablets must be treated very differently.
“Tablet traffic seems to use the site like they would on a desktop device. We have touch-enabled all the slideshows and made sure the apps work properly and as a result have seen the strategy working, with consistent conversion rates between tablet and desktop,” Innocentin said.
Using the right technology
Innocentin also emphasized the importance of determining what strategy to use when creating a mobile site.
He said responsive design allows hotels to build sites that will work on desktop, tablet and mobile, but with this hoteliers must assume they’re in the position to redesign an entire website. Dynamic page serving, he said, automatically detects through what type of device a user is accessing the website and points them to different platforms, such as mobile versus desktop.
A third option—parallel mobile sites—is probably the most popular because it has the lowest barrier to entry, Innocentin said, adding: “You don’t have to rebuild your desktop site and it offers the highest flexibility. In this case you end up with a separate URL for your mobile site.”
Fairmont opted for a parallel mobile site.
“This gives us the flexibility to utilize some mobile-specific content. Even so, we have been able to fully utilize the desktop content to populate the mobile site so we don’t end up having to manage two separate content databases,” Innocentin said.
One of the most important lessons Heyn and his team at Ritz-Carlton learned was to be device agnostic.
“We have a lot of customers that travel with a BlackBerry or a Windows phone, so we need to make sure functionality matches on these as well as the iPhone,” he said.
From mobile to marketing
With a mobile platform in place, hoteliers must then revisit their marketing strategies, Innocentin said.
“Search campaigns including click-to-call tracking, display advertising, looking at strategies to promote your brand through display on mobile. But the really critical thing is emails and landing pages,” he said. “Make sure you optimize email for mobile as there is nothing more frustrating than not being able to read an email properly on your phone.
“About a year and a half ago we made the effort to mobile optimize all of our email campaigns. As a result of this we have seen about a 50% increase in engagement rates from our emails.”
Heyn said hoteliers need to personalize the mobile experience.
“We sell hotel rooms but we officially sell experiences and memories. An important part of mobile is how to create these experiences and memories. What we want people to remember is the experience not the bill,” he said.