Doing business in the 21st century will eventually require every hotel or bed and breakfast to have a website in one form or another. Whether your site is interactive or simply informational, there are steps you can take to ensure you’re on the right track to creating a successful web presence.

1. Perform a Business Analysis

What is a business analysis? Simply put, review your business requirements and your objectives. What do you want to accomplish? How does your website fit into your overall business plan?

2. Perform some research.

Research your competition and other hotel websites. See what kind of competition is out there. What kind of marketing does your competition engage in? Take a look at how the current market works; develop a list of pros and cons about your competition and then make your web presence work better.

3. Develop a concept and a design.

Finally time for the creative stuff! This involves the selection of specific content, the layout of the site structure and navigation and the overall “look and feel” of your website. Remember to pay special attention to your navigational structure. If visitors can’t navigate your website or feel lost when doing so, your “pretty” site will have been a waste of time; don’t go there, keep the navigation simple and for SEO purposes, make sure your navigation is text based. Many hotel websites today feature Flash-driven introductions. Don’t use these unless you fell it’s absolutely necessary. These flash introductions usually take some time to load in browsers. Guests will quickly become bored with this, and simply bypass your site.

4. Develop your website.

When considering which technology to develop your website, think cutting edge technology, not bleeding edge. Make sure the technology you use, such as ASP, PHP, HTML, CSS, will be useful for the next three to five years. An SEO friendly CMS will utilize real URLs, not strange looking query strings with lots of strange characters and question marks. Search engines despise query strings and rank these site accordingly.

5. Choose a host provider and implement your website.

When deciding on a host provider, make sure the host is not only reputable, but has been in business long enough that you can be sure they will be in business next year. Also, ask about site uptime. If your site is down for any reason, this will not only affect your potential and current customers, but the search engines as well. If the search engines decide on a given day to spider your site and it is unavailable, it could cost you your rank.

6. Promote and market your website.

Register your site with the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Initiate other marketing activities such as an email blasts to prospective customers. Consider “Pay per Click” advertising with the major search engines and don’t forget about a long term SEO campaign to drive targeted traffic to your site.

7. Finally, maintain your website.

Probably the most important long term step is continuing to provide current and relevant information on your website. Keep your site content current to encourage return visitors and give them something to return for! Related to SEO, search engines just LOVE sites which provide new content on a regular basis and rank such websites accordingly.

Overall, remember, your website is not just a marketing tool, it’s a business tool, and it should be generating a constant flow of reservations from guests, and therefore a revenue stream for your business.

Instant World Booking is working hard to continue to innovate and lead online booking technology around the globe. Our latest innovation is a simple one, but unmatched elsewhere for online reservation services.

Hotels and hostels who advertise on our network can now upload an unlimited number of photos to their listing. You heard right — Unlimited! This feature is free, and as always, maintaining a listing with the Instant World Booking is free.

So what does this mean exactly. We have a again pushed above the service level of competing booking services. Look at typical hotel pages on most services. You’ll see maybe 6 or 7 of a property’s best photos, in a small image barely larger than a thumbnail. This does very little to sell your rooms and beds.

If you’ve been advertising your hotel, hostel, or bed and breakfast on the web for a while, you know that photos sell rooms! And, the more photos you have the better. Don’t include just photos of your guestrooms, but of all areas of your property. Give a real sense of what it’s like to stay in your hotel. And what about your environment? Include photos of the surrounding neighborhood and views from your property. This really sells rooms.

To add your photos, simply sign in to your listing at Instant World Booking, and proceed to the MANAGE PHOTOS page. You can upload an unlimited number of images. And, you can submit images as large as 8MB! No more re-sizing and touching up your photos. Our enhanced system will handle that for you. As a bonus, don’t worry about the format of your pictures, you can now submit JPEG/JPG, PNG, and GIF images.

So get online today, and add your photos. Remember, good photos increase reservations. If it’s been awhile since you’ve refreshed your pics, get your camera out, and start taking new photos.

As always, Instant World Booking looks forward to seeing you on the web. To get listed with our network, simply go to:

http://www.instantworldbooking.com/listings/add_listing.php

If you list your hotel, hostel, or bed and breakfast with Instant World Booking, or other online booking agencies, here is some advice for maximizing your reservation potential:

1) Ensure your listing is up to date and accurate. Include as much information as possible, not only about your property, but also about local attractions, restaurants, etc.

2) Make sure to spell-check your listing. Incorrect spelling signals to guests that the property is not professionally maintained.

3) Add photos. Listings with photos gain at least 4x more traffic than those without photos. Make sure your photos are large and complement your property and location.

4) Add a complete calendar of availability. Your calendar is important, since guests prefer instant booking over online requests. Make sure you have complete availability online, and at least 6-9 months of availability.

5) Include an accurate street address on your listing, as well as local directions. Guests will not book properties that they can’t easily find.

6) Use Instant World Booking’s low-cost options for accepting reservations on YOUR OWN website.

Remember, it can take several weeks to several months for Google and other leading search engines to effectively index your page on our network of sites. Instant World Booking has proven to be very successful in gaining top search engine rankings for its listed lodging partners. One last reason it is very important to use the instant booking method is that we use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to market your property on Google and other sites. Effectively use of a PPC campaign can cost you hundreds of US dollars. However, for our partners who use instant booking, we advertise your property in PPC campaigns for free.

One last note, persistence and patience is the key to success. Online marketing is “collective”. This means it is more effective to advertise your property on 2 services than 1. Persistent online presence is necessary to achieve online name (brand) recognition, and to gain higher search rankings for pages containing your property’s name. Advertising with Instant World Booking is an extremely valuable, and free, method of increasing your online presence.