Custom web design or template? Which one benefits your hotel business most?

Your hotel website portrays the personality of the accommodation, and the experiences it offers and offers to visitors. Therefore, it is the last benchmark to make a purchase decision.

It is not little to say that your hotel website is the most important sales and marketing tool to drive long-term business growth.

The first impression is invaluable, and usually has no reverse. When creating the website for your hotel, you must take into account some points, since your direct sale will depend largely on the way you present yourself.

Now, more than ever, guests communicate directly with hotels through their website and other direct channels, such as social networks. As a result, direct hotel reservations have been the most resistant during the pandemic, recovering rapidly.

Although most of your future guests will use OTAs to explore and compare prices through the different accommodation options, research shows that 87% of them generally visit a hotel's website before booking your stay.

Does your hotel have the digital presence it deserves? Does it stand out from the competition and generate the expected income?

To answer these, and others, questions, it is essential to observe some determining factors such as, for example, if visitors who arrive through your hotel's website leave the site quickly, if they find it easy to navigate, if it generates low or high levels of direct reservations, or if it is causing the impression that your hotel should have.

In this article we have listed some of the most important benefits and problems of a custom design versus a template design. This information will help you make the best decision in relation to your commercial and positioning objective.

Templates, a fast and economical way to be present

A web page built on a template is exactly that: a fixed template on which the user changes texts and images. This ease of content creation and manipulation has many advantages and a similar amount of disadvantages. Let's look at them point by point.

Disadvantages

Lack of exclusivity
As the same template is used for many websites, your hotel's direct channel may end up looking like many others, which will not help you distinguish yourself from the end user. This, on the other hand, can affect the credibility and authenticity of your brand.

Personalization limitations
Being a fixed template, there are many modifications that cannot be generated, making the future scalability of the business difficult.

Advantages

Cost
As it is a one-size-fits-all solution, that is, the same template can be used for a great diversity of business and content, its price is much lower. This is an advantage when investing in a web page is not your priority.

Time
A template is the most accurate choice if time is the determining factor over everything else. Since the code has been created beforehand, and the design is defined, the only thing that can stop the process of creating a web page by template is the generation of graphic materials, such as images and videos, and the creation of content.

Maintenance
It's incredibly easy to maintain a template-based website, as most templates are automatically updated.

How to get the most out of a squad

The Internet, and the way the pages are positioned, has changed a lot in recent years. Today, a modern template is preferable, like the ones we offer in neobookings, to a personalized but old website.

We have state-of-the-art templates, modern, attractive, and adapted to any type of current device.

NeoBookings customizable templates have been chosen with special attention to their sustainability and performance, offering quality and speed under the highest standards.

Custom web design: credibility, growth capacity and optimization

Although OTAs are the tools commonly used by guests when comparing accommodation prices, more than 80% of travelers usually visit the hotel website before making a reservation, and for a good reason.

If we compare between the options that a search on Booking.com throws with a hotel's website, it is evident that the hotel's website presents with greater precision the personality of the property and the unique experiences that the destination offers. For travelers looking for accommodation that meets their expectations, the hotel's website provides a complete view of the property, being the main point of reference when making a purchase decision.

Let's see the advantages and disadvantages of creating a direct channel tailored to your hotel business.

Enriched media, simple navigation and clean design, unique value and better prices, clear content and brand positioning, are the five fundamental components of the website of a hosting that seeks to make a difference.

Disadvantages of opting for a custom web design

Time
To optimize the quality of your hosting website, the most important thing will be to achieve excellent usability above all else. Your website can be attractive and modern, but if it doesn't help your customers quickly find what they are looking for, as little friction as possible, it won't work as your business deserves.
This is not done overnight, so it usually takes much longer than the adaptation of a pre-designed template.

Price
By opting for customization, you pay for quality, custom functionalities, and development team. Companies that are just starting out and are small, usually opt for templates to reduce the cost involved in the strategy of their digital presence.

Advantages of opting for a custom web design

Credibility
A custom website design increases business credibility. Visitors will be more attracted to a unique design that distinguishes your proposal from the competition.

According to an IronPaper survey, 48% of people mentioned the design of a website as the number one factor in deciding the credibility of a company.

Responsive design
A custom design allows the user experience to be optimal across all devices. The implementation of state-of-the-art technologies and trend observation ensure that the website is modern, attractive, and compatible with all devices and browsers, which increases the probability of standing out against the competition.

A survey revealed that 62% of the companies that designed their mobile platform website increased their sales and 64% of the companies that designed their tablet website increased their sales.

Site scalability
A custom website is designed with scalability in mind. It is possible that when generating a first version of your hotel page, you do not have the total vision of where the market will go and the needs or new verticals that arise in your business, so it is ideal to opt for a solution that allows expansion. A custom website can easily adapt as your business grows and changes. You can add new sections, pages, and features as needed without having to change the entire website design.

Search Engine Optimization
A custom website created by an experienced web developer will create the web page so that it is optimized for search engines, using the most recent codes with the highest standards. Depending on the coding used in the template (often complicated), this could have a big impact on the load times of the web, generating a negative impact on visitors, which, as it is shown, will not stay if the navigation is slower than it should.

How to get the best conversion in direct sales, thanks to a custom web design

NeoBookings works with SEO specialists, who position and adapt web pages and their contents for the main search engines. 

We carry out all custom designs from scratch, starting with the way your future guest will see it, and ending with the optimization of the source code – something that is done using the most current technology, and applying all the experience acquired during more than twenty years in the business.

In personalized designs we offer that extra point of exquisiteness and set-up that the most demanding customers want, making the web a fundamental part of the brand's experience.

Neobooking customers who have opted for personalized designs are characterized by wanting to differentiate themselves from the rest, be unique in the services they offer, and give their clients a little more thanks to the meticulous care of every detail.

Conclusions

In short, while templates can be a quick and economical solution, a personalized website is usually the best option for a hotel in terms of credibility, growth capacity, usability, conversion and search engine optimization.

Enriched media, simple navigation and clean design, unique value and better prices, clear content and brand positioning, are the five fundamental components of the website of a hosting that seeks to make a difference.