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A website has many advantages over listing portals. We wrote about some of them in the article Why is it important to build your property’s brand?. In this article, we will focus on destination content recommendations and how to use them to increase traffic to your website, and therefore bookings as well.
Let us start with understanding the guest and how they plan their holiday.
How does a guest plan their holiday?
- The guest, now in the cold winter period, overwhelmed with work and family obligations, dreams of warm days, sunshine, the sea, relaxation, and begins planning their holiday.
- First, they choose the destination and surroundings – which country they want to visit and whether they want to go to the seaside or the mountains.
- At the same time, they decide how they want to travel – by car, plane, bus, or train. They decide whether they want to be mobile, meaning to have their own or a rented car, or whether they do not want to use a car at all, but instead want everything close by and reachable on foot or by bicycle.
- Based on all of the above, they choose a destination within the country they want to visit and select the type of surroundings – urban, rural, or something in between.
- Now they search for activities and plan what they will do at the destination. If they are travelling with children, it is important for them to find enough interesting activities their children will enjoy. If a dog is travelling with them, it will be important to be near beaches where dogs are welcome, as well as parks and open spaces for running.
- The guest then chooses among different types of accommodation according to what matters most to them. If they want privacy, they will most likely choose a holiday home. If they are looking for more affordable accommodation, they will choose among apartments and studio apartments. If they want meals and room cleaning included, they will choose a hotel.
- Once the guest has chosen the type of accommodation, they decide what features the property should have: free parking, free internet, a heated pool, a children’s pool, a baby cot, bicycles, and so on. The guest looks at everything they can get for their money.
When looking for a property, they will very likely search listing portals, but they will also search Google, especially Google Maps. This is exactly where your opportunity lies.
How can you connect with a guest on Google through recommendations?
In the article How to write text for your website that brings bookings?, we wrote about how to highlight the advantages of your property and persuade a guest to book it. But before that, the guest first needs to find us on Google. How do we make that possible?
Earlier, we mentioned that the guest searches for what they can do at the destination they have chosen. They enter keywords into Google and get many results. Among them, they choose the pages where they know they will get reliable and more credible information, and these are often blogs, tourist board websites, but also agency websites and rental property websites. Why? Because they look for recommendations, they trust personal experiences, not generic descriptions that appear in the same form in countless brochures and service-provider websites.
Where is your advantage in all this?
Your website is a tool through which you can connect with the guest, and recommendations are the advantage that will help the guest reach you more quickly.
How to prepare recommendations?
The first step in preparing recommendations is to know exactly who you are preparing them for. Think about it and describe the profile of the guest who most often stays in your property – are they families with babies or older children, couples, groups of young people, retirees… Every one of these profiles will look for the kind of content that suits them best.
Then ask yourself what that guest is interested in when travelling to a destination. Here is a list you can expand with your own ideas and content.
- The nearest beaches, beaches with an easy entrance to the sea, beaches where dogs are welcome, beaches accessible for people with disabilities
- Restaurants
- Museums, galleries, events
- Natural attractions, for example caves, viewpoints, islands, and similar places
- Outdoor activities, such as hiking and cycling trails, boat trips, diving, horseback riding, and more
- Activities for children, such as an aquapark, aquarium, farm with domestic animals, parks
Below we provide guidelines on how to prepare each individual recommendation.
How to describe beaches?
When preparing descriptions, you should always focus on what is important for the guest to know. When it comes to beaches, they will want to know what the entrance into the sea is like, whether the beach is pebbly, sandy, or rocky, whether it is always crowded, or whether there are parts where they can enjoy some privacy. If they are travelling with children, it will be important for them to know whether the beach is suitable for children, whether they can buy ice cream, refreshments, or coffee nearby, and whether there are toilets and changing facilities by the beach.
If there are beaches near you that are accessible for people with disabilities, and your property is accessible as well, be sure to highlight them on your website. The same applies to pet-friendly beaches, especially if you accept pets.
How far the beaches are from the property is information that means a lot to the guest, but instead of expressing distance in meters or kilometres, state it in minutes and explain how to get there. So instead of writing that the beach is 400 metres away, say that it can be reached from the property on foot along the promenade in around ten minutes.
How to describe the gastronomic offer?
The guest does not choose a restaurant, unless it is a renowned restaurant they specifically want to visit, but rather the food. Since they have already come to get to know the destination, they are also interested in its gastronomic offer, but a trustworthy one. They want to know where they can eat well.
You do not have to write your own subjective impression of the food and restaurants, but instead highlight the special features of the gastronomic offer of that hospitality venue.
List restaurants with traditional dishes, fresh fish and seafood, unusual dishes, local specialties, or perhaps restaurants that have received recognitions and awards. With each description, add a link to the restaurant’s website and/or contact details.
What to do at the destination?
Highlight a few of the most important events that you assume could be a reason for the guest’s arrival. Why? Because of keywords.
If a guest wants to come to Pula during the Pula Film Festival, they will type the name of that event into the search engine. In order to attend the festival, they will certainly stay in the destination for several days and will need accommodation. If they find it already while searching for events, you have shortened their search and secured yourself a guest.
What to visit at the destination?
Besides the sun and the sea, most guests will also be interested in what else the destination offers – from cultural and natural sights to various activities and experiences. The key question the guest asks themselves is: “What can I visit, see, and try?”
Adapt this part of the recommendations to the type of guest who most often stays with you, but also to the type of guest you want to attract. If these are families with children, focus on day trips and activities children will enjoy, such as horseback riding, visiting a farm and meeting domestic animals, an aquapark, or theme parks. If they are older couples, they may be interested in galleries, museums, and the history of the place. If your most frequent guests are young people, places for a good night out are what interests them most.
Your offer as a competitive advantage
In addition to the offer we have already mentioned, a website is the perfect place to highlight your own additional offer, whether it is free for your guests or available at an extra charge.
If, for example, your offer includes electric bicycles, a jacuzzi, table football, a billiard table, or if your yard has a volleyball or tennis court, highlight all of this on your website.
But perhaps, in addition to renting out accommodation, you are also engaged in renting pedal boats, kayaks, or boats, or you offer excursions, tastings, sell olive oil, run a restaurant, or provide other services and products that might also be interesting to your guests. Highlight all of that in your recommendations as well. You will not provide those services to your guests in the role of the host of the property where they are staying, meaning as a private host, if you are not registered for them, but no one prevents you from highlighting them as recommendations on your property’s website.
This may be precisely the key reason why the guest will choose your property instead of another one, so treat it as a competitive advantage.
Four benefits of recommendations
Some will say: “I am not going to advertise others, let them do that themselves,” but it is precisely this “advertising,” that is, your recommendation, that connects you with the guest and through it you win them over, as well as their trust. There are several benefits:
- If the guest really had a great time at the destination based on your recommendations, they will mention all of that in a review of your property.
- These recommendation descriptions help guests find you more easily on Google, through keywords while they search for activities in the destination.
- Recommendations also serve to increase your credibility in the guest’s eyes because, as we have said, the guest trusts recommendations. Once they gain confidence through your recommendations, and if they were also looking for exactly a property like yours, the likelihood that they will book your accommodation becomes significantly higher.
- An additional reason is that all this content on your own website shortens the time needed to explain things when welcoming the guest. You can give them a brief overview of the destination and then send them a link to your website where they will find more information and, more importantly, contacts. This will mean a lot to a guest tired from travelling.
Recommendations of destination content published on a website are a major advantage over listing portals because you cannot highlight them there in the same way, and the guest will first look for what they can do at the destination and only then for accommodation.
Make it possible for them to find and contact you directly, and give them a reason to stay with you.
Is it time to invest in your own website?
Start receiving direct bookings already for the upcoming season and save thousands of euros on agency commissions.
