Without content parity on metasearch, you will keep losing direct bookings

The success of vaccination programs in some countries has seen hotels starting to welcome back visitors after one of the most challenging years in the industry’s history.

As demand begins to return, visibility will be the number one decisive factor in securing market share. Yet, most hotels – from those affiliated with major brands to small boutiques – are failing at the first step. By sharing inconsistent information about their property across their distribution channels, directories and other hotel listings sites, they are seriously damaging their chances of attracting guests.

The simple, but time-consuming task of updating and cross-checking information across internet platforms is costing hotels traffic and therefore bookings. Google makes it clear: having complete and consistent information, known as content parity, on all booking and listing platforms can make the difference of whether your hotel is found by guests or not.

With hospitality businesses already operating on a skeleton staff, who really has the time to check and update every possible online platform, especially when multiple properties are involved?

To get around this, hotels are turning to subscription-based generic location marketing platforms that bulk-update the so-called local citations on online directories and bookings sites.

But these often lack the tailored fields that hotels need to effectively promote their offering, and, with a few exceptions, it is the marketing platforms that own the listing entries, rather than the hotelier. Which means that, if you stop paying them, you automatically lose all your listings.

We knew a more effective approach was needed. At such a pivotal time in their recovery, hotels need all the help they can get to secure heads in beds. That’s why Fornova has stepped up to the plate.

We have developed a solution specifically for the hospitality industry that enables hoteliers to automatically update their property’s profile and attributes on Google My Business, Tripadvisor, Trivago and Facebook - all from a single, secure, centralized, easy-to-use platform.

Many other business directories and data aggregators will be added over the coming months.

For now, hoteliers can download their hotel’s profile from our platform and use it across all of their channels, including any listing website that we haven’t yet integrated with, therefore ensuring the property’s profile is always consistent and correct across the board.

A new innovation only for hotels

FornovaHL (Fornova Hotel Listings) is the only intelligent listings solution to be designed specifically for the hospitality industry. It contains all the specialist fields that hotels need to attract guests effectively – from the standard amenities’ listings, to safety measures against COVID-19, such as enhanced cleaning, personal protection, physical distancing and contactless check-in.

And, in recognition of the support the industry has sandhown Fornova over the years, we want to do our part - by making FornovaHL free to all independent hotels, as well as to the first hotel in any chain. The aim is to not only boost hotels’ online visibility, but also to help free up hoteliers’ time, to allow them to concentrate on other critical recovery tasks.

Fornova is known in the industry for our sophisticated solutions that help hotel commercial teams deal with big complex challenges, such as optimisation of pricing and distribution. In fact, FornovaDI (Fornova Distribution Intelligence) is the rate parity solution being used by all Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Minor hotels.

With FornovaHL we wanted to solve the simple problem of content parity in online directories, by using our intimate knowledge of the industry and our established relationships, as connectivity partner to Google and data partner to booking and Expedia. So we created the first and only business profile and location data management solution specifically designed and built for the hospitality industry.

In case you are still wondering, here is why content parity really matters:

Google My Business optimization

Google dominates the search and metasearch arena. When we go online, approximately 80% of us search on Google. In the USA alone, there are almost 3 million searches each month for ‘hotels near me’. In fact, as Phocuswire had reported previously, Google directly contributes, on average, in the form of organic and paid marketing referrals, to over 50% of direct online room nights for most hoteliers.

Travelers admit they are more likely to trust the information they find on a Google search than the information on a branded website. This alone should be enough to ensure hotels are doing all they can to make sure their hotel is front and center of the search results.

Google is also the only price comparison website to provide free traffic to hotels – no other metasearch engine does this. But to capitalize on it, hoteliers must optimize every mention of their property across every online channel and directory. Ensuring information is complete and consistently displayed is critical to improving search results.

Every time a hotel appears on a metasearch site, online travel agency, or other directory, the information displayed should be the same and as complete as possible.

The first stop for this is Google My Business, where hotels should ensure every field available is complete; ranging from basic information such as name, address, and location, through to all amenities, Covid safety provisions, categories, and images.

A hotel's ranking and hence visibility online is influenced by a variety of factors, but what is up to hotels to influence is how consistent the information Google has about them is from across the web, such as from links, articles and directories - so it is vital to keep all this information up to date and to continually be adding to it.

NAP consistency

Name, Address and Physical Place (NAP) is what it all comes down to. A hotel will rank higher in a search when it can be identified as a physical location, and with a consistent name and address. Any time information is inaccurate, the hotel is effectively marked down.

Inaccurate directory listings can confuse or misdirect customers and negatively affect any business’s reputation, whereas each missing piece of information potentially represents another missed revenue opportunity.

Accurate and optimized local citations are SEO-friendly and proven to rank very high in search engine results pages (SERP), as well as in maps, and are also picked up by other platforms; they drive web traffic, increase awareness and enquiries, and facilitate conversion.

Correct geolocation

Map listings are just as important as the main search results. Hotels must ensure they are visible in both and have a blend of rich, accurate content. It is surprising to see how often hoteliers have the wrong geolocation listed.

With recovery starting with the local and drive-to markets, making sure guests know exactly where your property is located is a basic requirement.

Pre-booking, it can make the difference whether you are in the right place for their needs, whereas post-booking, nothing is more frustrating than typing in the location into Google Maps or another map service - only to find out it leads you to the wrong place.

Same as with the NAP fields, having an accurate and consistent geolocation increases the hotel’s chances of organically appearing higher up in search results.

Breadth of amenities

Search on sites such as Google is becoming increasingly more sophisticated. The days of typing in a couple of words and sifting through the results are gone. Travelers can now type in whole phrases to refine their searches and Google will link the relevant hotels’ locations with the amenities request.

For example, Portugal has seen a huge spike in bookings since being added to the UK’s green list. The country’s largest hotel chain, Pestana, said demand jumped 250% in the first week and rose by 475% with external booking operators. Because when travelers are searching for "Algarve hotel with beach and pool," Google will return results of hotels whose listings tick all those boxes.

That is why hotels must both fully complete their Google listing and ensure the listing is accurately reflected across all other outlets.

Local search results are based primarily on relevance, distance, and prominence. A combination of these factors helps Google to find the best match for the searcher. For example, Google’s algorithms might decide that a hotel that is further away from the desired location has more of the amenities than a closer hotel, and it will therefore rank it higher in local results.

Room hierarchy

Is your hotel consistent when it comes to the room types being advertised across all channels? It seems obvious – hoteliers should offer the same room types, with the same room names and descriptions, wherever the hotel is mentioned across the web. In reality, it’s surprisingly often not the case.

The naming of room types is often different across channels (e.g. what is a double room on a brand .com site may be labeled as an executive bedroom elsewhere). Keeping room types and descriptions consistent avoids confusing the public and keeps things equal between the hotel website and other channels.

Rich content

It’s not just the text that hotels need to check for equivalence, it is the property’s images too. Google will be checking external listings to ensure that the photos used to promote the hotel are consistent, as well as in the correct size and format.

If updating the text on multiple different directories wasn’t a task tedious enough, having to upload images could add hours to the task. That is why using an automated platform is so critical; FornovaHL will automatically upload images and will additionally provide guidance on the types of photos best to use.

Corporate transient and MICE segments

While cost-conscious leisure guests are likely to book directly on a branded website or make reservations through an OTA, corporate transient travelers (who typically pay higher room rates and are within the higher income demographics) and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences & exhibitions) organizers are considerably more likely to rely on a local directory or Google or Facebook for guidance on which hotels to consider.

So, for properties where these channels generate a significant proportion of their revenue, making sure their listings are up to date has never been more critical.

A smart content parity solution for hoteliers

With the recovery of the global hospitality industry imminent, it’s essential that hoteliers have all the tools and support they can get to assist them in capturing the maximum share of any traveler demand.

Ensuring content parity across metasearch and online directory listings is an essential ingredient for boosting visibility, traffic and direct bookings.

FornovaHL makes it quick and easy for hotels to standardize and optimize their online presence and take control of their location marketing. It will initially cover the sites which generate 90% of all hotel demand and keep expanding to ensure hotels can automatically publish complete and consistent information across all platforms.