Content for tourism and hospitality sites

My worst experiences with hospitality sites have been to do with vague location, online timetables, poor follow-up communication, and out of date information. I have wasted days as a result, which I hate.

The facts, Ma'am, the facts

Write briefly: don't waste a word - but be friendly. Use simple English that people from other countries will understand.

Your typical customer will research heavily and compare your service with others. So give plenty of details - briefly.

State the facts in an orderly way, for example as a list. Especially, explain distances, location, transport choices and costs. And for goodness sake, give the owner's name.

Include photographs, but make sure they are relevant and download rapidly.

Use links to related sites cannily: you don't have to sing the praises of your area if the local government already does this well.

Contact without tears

Give several options for contacting you, for example, phone, fax, actual email address, street address. If your customers use English as a second language, they may be nervous about phone conversations, and prefer to fax. Where credit cards are involved, some people consider phone contact is the most secure.

Not everyone likes using online forms. If you use an online form, test it with real users first.

In fact, ask five people to test your site. You may think you have made the facts perfectly clear: but your opinion is irrelevant. What matters is whether your customers get the message - fast, before they get annoyed and click to a better web site.

And answer me - now! A great website is only as good as the personal service you give. Reply to all queries immediately, and state whether you have made the booking.

In 2002 I booked a Sydney hotel through an agency, and never heard back, despite multiple emails. Phoning the hotel was the only solution - infuriating! Sure, they had booked me in, but nobody told me.

Nothing fiddly, nothing fancy

Look at your competitors: which site do you like best? Learn from what others do well, and don't be too original. If your designer starts from scratch, you may get something very clever -- and unusable.

Keep online timetables and selections as simple as possible. Be sure customers can see what they need without fidding with the mouse, or scrolling too far.

I even changed my allegiance for local air travel because the two big airlines had such fiddly, difficult timetables online. The little airline, no cheaper, showed me what I wanted in a minute. I could quickly print out the timetable with prices, and the booking was straightforward.

Beware of using tables for text: tables must be small, with minimum amount of text, or the whole thing turns to gobbledegook on some computers.

Show me where you are

I once wasted hours looking for a hotel in Canberra that would allow me to walk to my client's training venue. On accommodation portals, some hotels had splendid maps, some had illegible maps, and most had none.

It's not an archive

Out of date information will definitely lose you customers. Any sign that a site has mouldered for months or years is an instant turn-off. In particularly, people get annoyed if your prices are higher than advertised.

The solution? Mention a date on the web page so people have confidence that the facts are current.

Think of your web site as a monthly or weekly magazine, not as a book that once published, need never be revised. Review, revise and update your site regularly. Ask your customers for feedback. Give them what they ask for, not what you think would be nice.

Novella furnished apartment in Wellington

Image "Mount Egmont" � 2003 Kirby Wright, Photographer.

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