[WEBINAR] — Designing the next-generation hotel website

August 30, 2016

Learn how to build and optimize a successful e-commerce site that increases direct bookings

Hotels owners and managers are rightfully frustrated about the increasing dependency on online travel agencies (OTAs) and their high commission fees. But the OTAs’ growth in the market hasn’t happened by chance. These companies have invested millions into understanding and mastering travel e-commerce.

In contrast, many hotels haven’t adapted to the changing nature of how people research and book travel online. For years, the hotel website has been treated like brochureware (a fancy digital brochure), rather than an e-commerce site. This has limited the ability of many hotels to capture direct bookings and maintain a healthy share of low-cost direct revenue.

In this webinar, we’ll deep dive into hotel e-commerce, and we’ll take a look at the the principal strategies in web design, conversion optimization, and digital marketing that help hotels successfully capture direct bookings. Executives from Travel Tripper will discuss:

• When modern web design goes wrong—why some websites fail at earning revenue
• The role of user experience in boosting conversions
• Taking advantage of OTA techniques to drive higher direct bookings on your site
• How mobile is changing the way we research and book travel
• Why a website isn’t enough—the role of digital marketing in capturing bookings

Date: September 13, 2016
Times: 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM Eastern Time (two options)

PANELISTS

Steffan Berelowitz, VP of Digital Platforms at Travel Tripper
Steffan is the VP of Digital Platforms at Travel Tripper where he oversees the website and digital marketing services for hotel customers.  Steffan was formerly founder of Bluetrain.io, a website platform acquired by Travel Tripper in early 2015. Prior to Bluetrain.io, Steffan founded and ran one of Boston’s top 10 digital web agencies. Steffan’s agency, Bit Group, was an Inc. 500 company (ranked #155) as one of the fastest growing private companies in the USA. Bit Group implemented over 350 web sites for 150 companies including Cisco, Dell, EMC, two divisions of GE, as well as prominent B2C brands and organizations.

Tristan Heaword, Director of Digital Marketing at Travel Tripper
Tris comes to Travel Tripper with more than 10 years of experience in digital marketing and e-commerce, particularly in search network advertising, ad retargeting, SEO, and PPC management. He is a certified Google AdWords and Bing/Yahoo Ads specialist and expert in conversion optimization and booking revenue maximization. At Travel Tripper, Tris has helped hotels to earn millions in direct booking revenue through strategic digital marketing management.