5 Ways Your Slow Website is Ruining Your Hotel

Does your hotel’s website take two seconds or less to load? If not, then as a hotel manager, you have a huge problem on your hands. Research has repeatedly shown that potential hotel clients tend to give up on trying to load a slow website at the third-second mark. Not five seconds, not four: at the third second. If your website takes longer than your competitors to load, then you’re losing out. However, you’re not losing out on just one front, but five.

1. You lose the booking

This is the most obvious result of a slow website. If a potential client has your site loading alongside half a dozen others, your window is going to be closed pretty quick if its load time doesn’t keep up with the others. Worse still, research shows the overwhelming majority of users won’t return to the site in the future (around 80% by some estimates). In other words, each time your site gets beaten by a faster competitor, you’ve lost a customer for life.

2.  Your search ranking is hamstrung

Here’s an interesting fact about websites that perform well on search rankings: they tend to be fast. Speed isn’t everything, but in recent years it’s become evident that load times are factored into Google’s search rankings. This means fast websites are more likely to appear near the top of Google search results, while slower ones will be pushed down. So, it’s not just customers that don’t want to give your slow website the time of day – Google is also passing you by.

3. Group sales are being slaughtered

If backpackers and holidaymakers don’t have time for your slow site, then neither to meeting planners. Slow websites can infuriate planners. These people are already juggling a range of demands, such as organizing transport, speakers, activities and every other aspect of a meeting. They simply don’t have time to tolerate your slow website. Moreover, your slow website will reflect badly on your group sales department and the hotel in general. Think about it: if your website is inefficient, clunky and just generally horrible to work with, why wouldn’t planners assume the rest of the business is exactly the same?

4. Your bottom line is bottoming out

A while back, Amazon did an interesting study of their own website speed and purchasing trends. They uncovered a harsh reality: every second of site idleness translated into a full 10% potential revenue loss. That’s data from a website that has virtually cornered its particular market. For a hotel with many competitors, odds are the data is even less merciful. It can sometimes be hard to calculate exactly how much money you’re losing thanks to slow load times, but odds are it’s more than you think.

5. Your hotel owners are taking a beating

Owners expect a return on their investment. If the website is failing to deliver, then ultimately the buck stops at management. You need to act and act quickly to get those load speeds down.