How important is mobile readiness for hotels?

Creating and managing a robust digital presence in an mobile-first environment is essential. We have looked at hotel’s value and mobile readiness across the UK, delving into whether or not there is a relationship between the two. Mobile readiness allows for easy and fast access to a website and it is something for hotel owners to think about if they want to generate higher traffic to their site and platforms. Hotels are often B2C and therefore it is essential that we are communicating to customers in the best way. Customers will be inclined to leave reviews especially when it is an establishment providing accommodation, meals and other services for travellers and tourists. These reviews are placed on widely used and recognised platforms, such as Yell. When ratings are low, business is hugely affected. What does mobile readiness mean for the hotel industry? The use of smartphones has grown, and nearly everyone uses a mobile phone to gain access to the internet. More than 58% of web visitors and more than 51% of page views are generated from mobile devices. By adopting a mobile strategy, you are ensuring your web content and assets are accessible, legible and usable to visitors across all devices. Many businesses around the world are adapting to changing consumer demands and not only have to rate highly on mobile friendliness but also on mobile website speed. When it comes to speed, a load time of 5 seconds or less is acceptable. There’s a huge amount to gain by improving mobile website speed. For many sales-focused businesses, such as those in hospitality, if the speed has faults or is slow, customers or clients might leave negative reviews on sites such as Yell.com. Bringing together real-life data and hidden data, we were able to gather information about the levels of mobile website speed of hotels across the UK. There was a clear correlation with those who scored well on mobile website speed and those who had high Yell ratings from customers. What did we find? With hotels in all UK regions showing positive growth we wanted to learn if their websites were in line with the growth. Hotels in Peterborough had an impressive mobile speed score of 82/100, with a strong Yell rating score of 3.7/5, and Bradford came second highest, with a speed score of 53/100 with a high 4.6/5 Yell rating. Newcastle has 293 rooms in the pipeline with a year on year growth of 3.3%, but their mobile speed was the lowest, as was their Yell rating. The regional hotel market has seen a consistent performance with all segments experiencing positive results. Hotels, motels and other hospitality businesses used to occupy a fairly simple space in people’s lives but the hospitality industry in the last several years knows that the role of technology in hospitality has drastically expanded. Comparing business success metrics, such as annual revenue numbers and reviews to mobile compliance rates, we can conclude that not only are we in a mobile-first world but that mobile readiness is something to consider for hotels in and beyond 2019 - improving customer satisfaction, branding, business efficiency and a boom in revenue. Text Local is mobile communications company based in Manchester.