A hotel experience
starts with a single click

According to travel industry analysts, over 700 million people will make a hotel room booking online in 2023 — good news for an industry that has weathered difficult conditions over the past few years. However, it also outlines how important it is as a hospitality business to ensure that your branding and online presence is as important as the service you receive when you enter your hotel.

Everything now begins with the online experience. 

In the digital age, the click is the gateway to attention, but design is the lever to conversion. Once location and price range have been decided, it is design that will be the biggest influence on the consumer in their journey from looking to booking — something fundamentally expressed through the look and feel of your brand and website.

Aspirational design and branding, coupled with intuitive websites have been shown to be key factors in successful year-on-year growth for both boutique and hotel chains. And although online travel searchers typically use online travel agencies such as Booking.com, Kayak or Expedia to browse and compare prices, research shows that 87% will visit a hotel’s website before booking a stay— and with good reason.

‘Once location and price range have been decided, it is in fact design that will be the biggest influence the consumer in their journey from looking to booking’

It is the most immediate and compelling way to connect with your brand, allowing you to showcase your offer — and your guests to start their experience with you from the minute they land on the homepage. Conversely, poor design and navigation can lead to people giving up in frustration before they even get to thinking about booking.

According to a survey by HospitalityNet, the decision to book a hotel is 39% rational and 59% emotional — and each design element creates a unique alchemy, from the right font to a logo design or the visuals that inspire an emotional reaction, which can move in the direction of a booking or abandonment.

But to successfully lead customers along the path to purchase, site design must also be focused on the former and the user experience as much as visual appeal, a nuanced balancing act of form and function that can unlock consumer behaviour – something that is fundamental to our approach as an agency.

In a modern digital world, your guests’ hotel service starts with the website.

Ensuring it is cohesive with brand narrative and authentic to the location is vital, as well as creating intuitive navigation that offers the user a true service experience. Skillful design bridges the needs of brand articulation and bottom line conversion — ultimately making the process of looking — and booking — as seamless as the experience of walking in the door of the hotel itself.