'Everything on the site must be right for quick instant bookings'

In today's competitive market, direct reservations are essential for hotel success. With Porter, Thomas Dieben, founder of Becurious - a digital marketing agency for hotels in Amsterdam - has created a solution for independent hoteliers who want more direct reservations. He explains how this specialised content management system (CMS) gives hotels an edge.

For almost a quarter of a century, Becurious has been creating high-quality digital marketing strategies for hotels. Thomas Dieben has developed a unique solution for independent hoteliers with his label Porter. With specialised designs as the basis for an outstanding hotel website, this concept is ideal for hotels that want to tell their own story. According to Dieben, it is crucial that a hotel website works flawlessly: "The technology must be perfect, the loading time lightning fast, booking must be possible in a few clicks and good findability is essential." With flexible designs, fully customised to the desired house style, Porter can usually deliver a perfectly functioning website that generates instant bookings within four to six weeks. Moreover, Porter offers integrations with all popular booking systems and extensive tracking in the CMS, giving hoteliers insight into their website's performance.

Findability

A telling example of the functionalities of this specialised hotel CMS is how good hotel findability in search engines is facilitated. "This is a bit technical but it boils down to configuring the standard FAQ module in such a way that questions and answers intelligently appear in search engine indexes. For example, if people search for check-in and check-out times, the answer is given right on the search engine result page. This technique is also used for answers in voice search applications such as Siri, Alexa or Google Home. OTAs also use these techniques, so it is important that hotels use this themselves. After all, information from the hotel itself is seen as more relevant, both by the search engine and the prospective guest."

Dieben the user-friendliness of the system. "Hoteliers can easily post new content, such as blogs, special offers, photos or other information. This allows them to concentrate on running the hotel, without having to spend much time on online marketing. Moreover, the CMS is specially designed to manage multilingual websites." Porter also offers unlimited personal support to help hoteliers with any queries or problems. 

Thomas concludes, "With Porter, we offer the ideal solution for hotels that want to tell their own story and increase their online visibility. We see that this always results in a significant increase in direct bookings, and therefore commission-free revenue."   

For Margreet Pauwe, independent hotelier of hotel De Witte Berken in Epe (4 stars, 30 rooms), there is every reason to be pleased with the website recently completed by Porter. "Last year, my husband and I took over the hotel. One of the first things we wanted to get right was a new website. I was convinced that we should not want to build a new site from scratch. In my search for a supplier, I found in Porter a party that was specialised in the field - i.e. the hotel industry - as well as one with a CMS that had already pooled a lot of experience and lessons learned from the past."

"The nice thing is that the CMS is considerably faster than what we had before. That's nice to work with. Moreover, I can easily manage all the content myself. As a result, I keep control. The site fits perfectly with what we want to be with our hotel. Peace, space and nature. The developers translated the desired experience well into the look and feel. But above all, I appreciate the personal contact. Right at the start, Thomas Dieben visited us. At a time like that, you notice that the one-to-one contact with a supplier is very important and leads to a great result."

In the Netherlands, Porter built the websites of the Mother Goose Hotel in Utrecht, Post Plaza in Leeuwarden, Kasteel Kerckebosch in Zeist, the Olympic Hotel in Amsterdam and Hotel Unplugged in Rotterdam, among others. In Belgium, the sites of Hotel Velotel in Bruges and Landgoed
Altenbroek in the Voer region built with a design by Porter.