REPORT FROM THE U.S.—Hotel chains have drastically improved their website performance during the past few years and are nearing the online travel agencies in terms of site performance.
In a recent Keynote Competitive Research study, Marriott International took the top spot in the hospitality industry in terms of “best overall technical quality” for the hotel company’s websites. Meanwhile, Hotels.com ranked highest for “best overall customer experience.” Expedia and Orbitz rounded out the top three for customer support.
However, when consumers rated “trust and security” of hospitality websites, Marriott ranked No. 1, followed by Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Orbitz, Sheraton and Expedia.
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George Corbin
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Keynote conducted online interviews with 1,800 prospective online travel customers as they interacted with leading hotel and OTA websites including Expedia, Hilton.com, Hyatt.com, Hotels.com, Marriott.com, Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity. Then, the mobile and Internet monitoring firm performed 6,000 technical measurements—such as the speed, reliability and load-handling capabilities—on each website.
Hoteliers’ high performance in technical quality and trust and security did not come about by accident. Marriott, for example, invests millions of dollars a year and numerous employees to ensure that its site performs quickly, is ranked high in search results and meets customer satisfaction.
In Internet performance management company Gomez’s 2010 hospitality rankings, Marriott’s website ranked No. 1 in terms of “availability,” followed by Orbitz. “We put a lot of time and attention toward that. If you have trouble doing the core function, that is lost revenue,” said George Corbin, VP of e-commerce strategy for Marriott, which grossed US$6.4 billion in Internet bookings in 2010.
If Marriott’s website availability function decreases by even 0.1%, that could result in US$6 million in lost revenue for the company globally, Corbin said. Marriott and other hotel chains cannot afford to have glitches in website performance, which directly impacts guests’ willingness to book.
And guests are booking their hotel stays via the Internet in record numbers. One in three global travelers will book online by 2012, according to a new PhoCusWright study. PhocusWright’s “Global Online Travel Overview” projects that global travel bookings will increase 6% in 2011 and 6% in 2012.
Working to improve
During the past two years, Hyatt e-commerce executives have significantly enhanced the brand’s website performance and search-engine rankings. As a result, Hyatt is rated in the top-third of Gomez’s hospitality rankings for homepage performance, which includes the speed that the page loads when guests search.
“It is so critical—not only from a customer service perspective but also because search engines use it as an element in their ranking. If your site is faster, you rank higher in the search engine results,” said Bill Bernahl, VP of e-commerce for Hyatt.
Hyatt has boosted website speed by re-architecting the configuration of its application servers.
“We are always monitoring our server capacity and add servers in advance of anticipated demand. And we are always focused on, ‘How do we reduce the number of requests to the servers?’” Bernahl said.
Hyatt also improved the performance of its media tags for tracking ads and media. “If we bring new ad partners on board, we make sure they are fast and efficient,” he said.
Hyatt’s work in boosting Web performance is paying off. In March, the chain’s customer satisfaction scores linked to home-page performance increased by 17%, according to Bernahl. Conversions to booking also increased as a result of these improvements.
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Bill Bernahl
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Marriott has greatly increased online booking revenue by investing in website architecture and design. In recent years, Marriott executives have learned that keeping its website functioning quickly and smoothly is essential. Seventy-five percent of its guests use Marriott’s websites at some point—not just for booking rooms—and Marriott.com is the eighth largest consumer retail site in the world, according to Internet Retailer.
Soon after Marriott executives realized that guests are using the Marriott.com site to engage with the brand, they re-designed the front page. The page now features large graphic “cards” with various options, including booking guestrooms, viewing packages, learning about meetings and member exclusives.
“The site looks completely different today than it did two or three years ago and than any of our competitors’ sites. We focused on the power alleys: This is where people go and where we can have big impacts,” Corbin said.
Marriott also enhanced the site’s guestroom search displays. “We have made the pricing displays much more clear. Before, you would see a long list of rates without much explanation. We have brought in product imagery, clearer rate descriptions and exclusive member packages, and have seen improvement as a result,” Corbin said. Offering clearer descriptions of guestroom rates, graphics and packages has resulted in “tens of millions of dollars” in revenue, Corbin added.
Meanwhile, Hilton was ranked second by Keynote in both “trust and security” and “booking process.” Andrew Flack, VP of global brand marketing for Hilton, believes this is because the chain has focused on technical performance and straightforward design.
“We work hard to keep our websites simple to use and very reliable in content and function. We guarantee that our best rates will always be available on Hilton.com, along with the greatest access to room availability,” Flack said.
OTAs lead conversion, satisfaction
Despite hoteliers’ improvements in website performance and booking engines, the OTAs lead hotel websites in many areas. According to Keynote Competitive Research, the top websites for “conversion” and “customer satisfaction” are Hotels.com, Expedia and Orbitz. In addition, consumers said that Hotels.com’s site is the most “convenient,” “friendly” and “flexible and accommodating to customer requests.”
“OTAs provide more options than any particular hotel. They are focused … across a variety of channels as online is their lifeblood,” said Christopher Musto, general manager of the Keynote Competitive Research group at Keynote Systems, a mobile and Internet testing firm in San Mateo, California. In addition, Keynote did not study guests who were loyal to a particular hotel brand. “If we did, the typical user might get the kind of experience reserved for returning customers who have profile information on file. That would be a different experience and one that some hotel brands seem better at than winning the prospective new or infrequent customer,” Musto said.