Search Engines & Internet Marketing

It is important for any business to thrive, hotels in particular rely on being found, sometimes it is through word of mouth when a person has stayed at the hotel and liked it and passed the information on to a friend. Other than that the hotel relies on good advertising. For instance Munich Hotel (Hotel in München) and other hotels within Munich advertise city breaks in holiday brochures, but the biggest way in which hotels are marketing their product nowadays is through the internet.

The internet has become a key tool for the holiday and tourism industry, people can log on the web and browse to find the hotel in which they might want to stay. Some hotel websites even offer virtual tours in hope that they will entice the customer through their door. Take hotel Erb – Munich (Hotel Erb – München) for example, this four star hotel is located close to the International Congress Centre and Munich International Trade Fairs, and has websites in German, Spanish and English.

Hotels all over the world are working towards getting their name to the top of a search engine, this means they have more chance of being found by a potential customer. There are key elements that should be remembered before putting any website on the internet, good design is crucial, in order to make a Hotel stand out from others who specialise in the same field. The home page of any hotels website should be clear as to what a hotel has to offer. All facilities and offers should be listed on the website along with the prices of the hotel. The website should be easy to access and use, pictures are a major part of selling a hotel to a customer, so good photograph’s should be put on the website, if a virtual tour can be offered this is also good.

The prices should be clear and not confusing. A description of the surrounding area of the hotel should be put on the website along with pictures of attractions near by. It is important to remember the market and the main customers, if there are many nationalities which visit the hotel yearly then the aim is to make sure you have the website available in all of these languages ie Spanish, English, German, French, this way you are not alienating part of the market.

It is always a good idea when advertising a hotel or company to offer something a little different from the competitors, so research into the competitors is essential. It may give additional ideas from the ones you already have, plus there may be something that you have overlooked which would be considered essential.

To get the most out of any website, it should be appealing to the potential customer, modern, bold and stand out from any competitor. If the hotel has received positive comments from tourists in the past then usually good reviews are put on the website to entice new customers in. As long as you have the tourists attention then your hotel should thrive through the advertising on the internet. Once the hotel has been found then it should make its way up the search engine rankings.