WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems available, because it’s free and reliable.
To recap, a content management system is a software system that allows you to manage all of your website content easily, without any technical skills. ‘Content’ includes all the elements of a website – pages, images, text, and videos.
In Wikipedia’s words, it’s ‘designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages to create and manage web content with relative ease’.
If you’re currently running your small hotel website on WordPress, here are the features you should look for when selecting a booking engine.
1) Easy to integrate
If your hotel booking engine that was built for WordPress isn’t easy to implement, that’s a red flag!
Make sure that:
• You can customise it to match your branding.
• It works with all WordPress themes.
• All of the data is getting saved by the vendor, and is easily accessible.
Consistency in look and feel is key – otherwise your guests might feel uncomfortable making a booking due to a lack of confidence in the legitimacy of your booking page.
2) Mobile friendly
Mobile-friendliness is non-negotiable for your small hotel website. According to Euromonitor, by 2017 nearly 30% of all bookings will be generated on a mobile device.
Consider how your booking engine will look on mobile, tablet, and desktops. In all scenarios, you should aim for user-friendly navigation – for example, big buttons and a lot of white space to accommodate differently sized screens.
Also, speed up your website’s loading time so that it doesn’t take longer than three seconds to load any page – including your booking engine page.
If you’re curious, Google has provided a mobile-friendly website check, where you can simply enter your website to see how well you score. Click here to check your website’s mobile friendliness.
Remember, the key is to make it as simple as possible for your potential guests to learn about your property and make a reservation with you, no matter what device they are using to access your website.
3) Simple payment processing
Your WordPress booking engine needs to make it as simple as possible for guests to pay for a reservation.
Make sure that the payment processing part of it:
• Is 100% secure and PCI compliant.
• Minimizes data entry.
• Allows for currency conversion.
• Triggers instant booking confirmation (an automated email).
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