The role of the hotel website is changing.
AI is doing the heavy lifting.
The marketing funnel model tells us that before a customer buys anything, they must go through these 5 stages:
Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Intent
Purchase
Before AI, customers would get awareness from google’s page one, mostly, via ads, organic spots or the hotel pack (the map bit).
It wasn’t much to go on.
A couple of sentences, a page title and link, usually. Maybe a picture.
To gain « Interest » the customer needed to explore the website or an OTA.
Now, it’s a simple prompt:
« [your brand] looks good, tell me more »
or, increasingly:
« tell me about the pros and cons of staying at [your brand] »
Over the next 12-18 months, customers will increasingly go through the first stages having never actually been on your website.
As the technology becomes increasingly available this year, AI will cover the purchase bit too with the likes DirectBooker and The Hotels Network connecting hotels with purchasing power within the AI chat.
So what does this mean for the humble hotel website?
Less traffic
Higher conversion (if they’ve made it to your website, they’re probably at « intent » rather than just « interest »)
and here’s the big shift.
Its primary job will be to fuel AI recommendations. The more FAQs, the more detailed customer personas explored within the copy, the more helpful content – the more likely it will be to be recommended by AI.
Your website will no longer be your digital shop window, AI is doing that bit for you.