Responsive Mobile Websites for Hotels - All You Need to Know

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Responsive Mobile Websites for Hotels – All You Need to Know

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The hospitality industry has gone through several rapid changes in recent years, continuously facing the need to adapt brought about by the advent of the sharing economy and rising consumer demands. Among the challenges that hotel managers and owners have to face in today’s digitally-driven age is the need for a high-functioning website.

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Why does a website matter?

With nearly all of today’s consumers relying on digital media to make purchases, it should come as no surprise that hoteliers must adapt to the opportunity of branching out to potential guests online. Through the use of a website, the entire reservation process becomes much faster and easier to carry out for both the hotel and its guests—saving valuable time, money, and effort in the first place.

Thanks to the rising demands of consumer convenience with online usage, however, having a website alone is not enough to convert and generate high-volume reservations frequently. Nowadays, a website must be fully-functional, attractive, easy to work with, secure, and, most of all, compatible with mobile access.

What is a mobile website?

A mobile website is tailored to the dimensions of a mobile device’s smaller display. Having a mobile website, however, goes beyond mere appearance. It makes it much easier for an originally desktop-designed website to match navigation and load time requirements.

Without having a mobile website, anybody who will try to make a booking at your hotel through their phone or tablet will be greeted with a terrible user experience that can easily drive them away. About 29 percent of smartphone users will opt to book elsewhere if they get a desktop version of your website on their mobile display.

What’s so important about having a great mobile website?

Over the past few years, mobile internet access and usage rates have been exponentially increasing—eventually surpassing desktop internet usage rates this year alone. A far cry from the expectations of merely being used for social media or games, mobile phones have become a valuable access point that every website has to consider when putting their design together.

For the hospitality industry, in particular, having a mobile website is vital because more than 20 percent of reservations are now made on a mobile device. It’s the same 20 percent that you could possibly miss out on if your website isn’t optimized to meet the rising mobile usage. As the rate of mobile bookings continues to increase, so does the need for your hotel to adapt to having a mobile website.

How should a mobile website look like?

A mobile website can either be created in a responsive or optimized format to match the specifications of a smartphone or tablet access.

Responsive websites primarily “respond” to a mobile device that’s being used to view it by changing the dimensions of the website in order to match the former’s dimensions. A responsive mobile website design simply looks the same as its desktop counterpart but has a faster loading speed, making it best for hotels that seek consistency across their platforms.

Alternatively, optimized websites are a separately designed website that is unique in comparison with its desktop counterpart. While it may have the same content as your desktop website, a mobile website can be customized to suit the behaviors of a smartphone or tablet user better.

Having a mobile website will give your hotel the advantage it needs in order to rake in higher booking rates, better user experiences, and superb customer satisfaction rates. If you recognize the need for a mobile website, then you’ve pretty much put yourself a few steps ahead of some of your competition.

Should you find yourself in need of a web designer that’s capable of creating a mobile web design for your hotel, then get in touch with expert developers and designers at Web Connection Asia today!

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