Maximizing Visibility with SEO, Online Media Programs and Other Digital Strategies with Sabre Hospitality Solutions
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The Digital Landscape
As today’s guest becomes more reliant on mobile technology and the internet, search engine optimization (SEO) plays an even greater role in influencing hoteliers’ online direct booking strategies. When done effectively, SEO drives traffic to your website — and, ultimately, to your hotel. Optimizing your website and getting ahead in online searches can also help you gain an edge over the competition, improve visibility and brand awareness, increase your credibility and customer trust levels, and enhance profitability by acquiring new customers.
Recent statistics from the imFORZA marketing research report show that 75% of people never scroll past the first page on a Google search. In fact, sites that land on the first page of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) attract 92% of all traffic for a given search. If your site is bumped to the second page, it plummets to 4.8%, and the third page receives only 1.1% traffic. The key takeaway for hoteliers is: if you are ranked below a multitude of other competitors, there is little chance that your targeted travelers will see, much less book your hotel.
“Working with the Sabre SynXis Digital Experience Team has enabled our digital performance to flourish. Their responsive service offered a dedicated strategic focus, while delivering insightful market knowledge on SEO that helped us to identify opportunities to drive clicks to our website, which ultimately helped to grow our business and increase bookings.”
Thomas Grundner
VP Sales & Marketing
Golf at JA The Resort | Dubai
The JA Resorts and Hotels Brand
Started in 1981, JA Resorts & Hotels has established itself as an international hospitality company known for its unique collection of properties in the Middle East and Indian Ocean. In fact, the company operated the Arabian Gulf’s first two resort properties in Dubai: Jebel Ali Hotel and Hatta Fort Hotel. Today, JA Resorts & Hotels has eight properties and will be adding two luxury lodges in 2020, which will add a total of 60 rooms. One luxury lodge will be in the Serengeti National Park and the other in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Africa. JA also has plans to expand into the Chinese market as well as Sri Lanka and other locations in Asia. These future plans for growth fall in line with their core mission to create, curate and deliver standout services and unique getaway experiences in remarkable locations.
Rock Climbing at JA Hatta Fort Hotel | Dubai
Business Challenges Facing JA Resorts & Hotels
SEO continues to be one of the most difficult items for many hoteliers to master when it comes to online marketing. Technical aspects, continuous streams of search engine updates, ambiguous social media connections, content marketing, and website usability all add to the complexity. JA understood that done right, SEO could drive measurable changes for their business.
Specifically, JA was looking to explore different digital strategies that would allow them to leverage their data, and effectively target audiences based on different markets, respective user behaviors, and adopt new concepts to drive highly qualified traffic to the direct channel.
With their current digital marketing solution, their website visits, bookings, and revenue growth were notably down. Understanding this, the team was interested in multiplying their look-to-book ratios to increase their market share and grow their direct bookings. To add to the complexity, JA was in the process of launching a completely redesigned website with a new URL. Changes to a website URL remove any historical ranking the website may have held, which changes the process from strengthening or rebuilding of rank to the much more complex endeavor of creating a new rank for a new website.
JA Lake View Hotel | Dubai
Achieving the Ultimate Goal: More Conversions
After an intensive discovery process, the Sabre SynXis Digital Experience team was able to effectively manage all digital strategies across the portfolio with an objective to drive more traffic to the online channel and increase website production. Following the focused digital strategy and with continued optimization, traffic grew by 38% from 2017 to 2018.
The JA team expanded their partnership with Sabre Hospitality Solutions in January 2019. The addition of new properties, an SEO program, and a greater investment to explore different digital strategies resulted in an improvement in online bookings by 63% and online revenue by 39%.
During the summer low season, both online traffic and bookings typically dip significantly. With the new website, enticing special offers and new SEO program, overall sessions to the website improved by 18% from June 1, 2019 to August 31, 2019 over the same time period in 2018. Additionally, online bookings improved by 65%, and online revenue improved by 44%. A closer breakdown revealed that July 2019 organic traffic received 5% more sessions to the website than July 2018 and showed an online revenue increase of 63%. These upward trends continued into August of 2019, where organic traffic showed a 13% session increase to the website than August 2018, and a 173% increase to online bookings. When the total numbers were reviewed, and taking into consideration the holistic digital strategy implementation, it was revealed that PPC bookings increased by 232% and online revenue improved by 342% year over year.
Delivering SEO Solutions that Keep Your Hotel Top of Mind
Serving more than 40,000 hotels, resorts, and chains across 174 countries, Sabre Hospitality Solutions has the experience and international reach the hospitality industry looks to for results-driven solutions that unlock new revenue opportunities. With a seasoned team of digital marketing and design experts, the team is proud to offer collaborative, effective digital strategies for all hoteliers. Together, let’s immerse guests in your hotel, your city, your culture, your experience. One powerful platform fuels it all, SynXis.
