Bookable Travel Websites - Things to Consider

When ordering a travel website one of the most important decisions you will need to make is whether to make you website bookable. It may seem that the obvious answer is, if you can afford it go for a bookable travel website, and if you can't afford it, don't.  This is a common misconception, and there is a lot more to consider when making this decision other than your budget. 

In this article we're discussing some things to consider when you're deciding on the right travel website, and how Ease Technology can help.

 

Bookings Overload!

A bookable website must be considered to be a long term investment.  Don't be fooled in thinking that all you need to do is order a bog standard bookable travel website and you'll suddenly be overloaded with bookings.  There is a swarm of travel websites out there!  Just do a search in Google and you'll see that there are some very big website that are dominating.  These websites have been built up over years and taken a great deal of investment along the way.  So your new website will take time to become established.

 

What Makes You So Special!

To avoid getting lost in the crowd of all the other travel websites, you have to have a good think about what specialism you can offer.  Ask yourself, why should people visit and book on your website, rather than one of the super travel websites?  

Often, you will have a specialism, but not have realised it.  Perhaps you might think that you just need a bookable website and that's it.  However without having a specialist, targeted website, it's going to harder to give customers a reason to visit your bookable website, and harder to give Google a reason to find it relevant to searches.

These specialisms might be geographical specialization, e.g. cheap hotels in Cyprus, or on product type, e.g. cheap skiing holidays in Bulgaria, etc.  A good web design travel technology company, should try and guide you in this regard.  Ease for example, take extra time to find out as much about their clients as possible in order to try and target their bespoke bookable travel websites to you.  We don't just sell out off the shelf!

 

Do Your Research

Once you've thought about your specialism and what you want your website to focus on, research your competition.  Launching a bookable travel website is the same as opening a new travel agency shop, you have to know who you're competing against and how you're going to beat them.

Search Google, and think about the searches you would hope you do well in.  Get advice!  Ease take care to advise you on how to approach your new website design.  We believe that your success on this website will mean more investment in us, so it's in our interests to see you succeed.

 

Work With A Company Who Cares!

Here comes the sales pitch!  

A bookable travel website can be a big investment.  It's not just a financial investment, but an investment in time and resources.  You will find travel technology companies, who will happily tell you what specification you need on your website, and probably give you a low build price.  However that's because they're selling you a package/template.  This is a website they've built once, and are going to copy over for you, changing the colours, and layout.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this, and even here at Ease we'll reuse code and scripts if it's save our clients time and therefore money.  There's no sense reinventing the wheel.  However, it's very important that your website is unique.  It has to be personalised to your business, your specialisms and your budget.

There is no point just having a bog standard bookable website which is the same and offers the same service as all other bookable travel websites, because unless you have a lot of money to invest, your website will not be as good as the super travel websites.  Companies such as Expedia or Directline Holidays for example, have re-invested into their website and grown it over the years.  They take care to keep an eye on competition, keep an eye on site visitors and see how they behave, and then tweaking their site to capture more bookings. 

Without a very large investment you will not catch up with these companies straight away, you will have to grow your website as they have, and focus on your USPs.  Don't expect too much straight away but look at the long term.  Keep changing things until you get it right and work with a company that give you personal attention.

Ease Technology can provide you with very high end professional bookable travel websites at costs that always beat our competition.  We take pride working closely with our clients and giving a very personal, tailored service.  When you call us, you will speak to a developer, and often this would be a developer who has helped build your site.  We're small enough to care about your website personally and know everything about it, but big enough and skilled enough, to be able to offer you any technology or feature you can think of for your website.

So contact us today, and we will talk you through the whole process of designing, building and launching your bookable travel website, with our genuine objective of helping you succeed and make money online!