At Simplotel we have built websites for over 2,000 hotels, and every single time we have been asked about how we drive traffic to a website. We have been asked by those who are usually suspicious of SEO because they paid for such services in past and may or may not have seen results. And we have been asked by our customers who see a 3x plus growth in their website traffic after coming to our platform – as to how we do it. While SEO can be a deep subject, today we will attempt to outline how one must think about SEO in this post.

At a high level SEO depends on three things –

  1. Technology and layout of the website 

  2. The content on the website

  3. Things happening outside your website
     

Technology and layout of the website

In order to determine the relevance of a website for a search term (also known as a keyword) search engines have a piece of software called a Bot (derived from the word Robot) that crawls (think of it as reads) content on your website. The Bot then stores the keywords that a website is most relevant for. This is known as indexing of a website.

Unlike users, bots see the code of the website and not what users see on a website (you can view the code of most websites by right clicking on a webpage and selecting view page source). The easier this code is for the search engines to understand, the better chance you have of conveying your content to the search engines and making sure that your content gets indexed correctly. Here again there are hundreds of things that matter. These include the load time of a website, the structure of website code, mobile friendliness, proper tags and sitemaps. Detailing these is a topic for a future blog.

The layout of your website also plays an important role in search engine optimization. Clean and simple navigation, easily readable content – they all add up towards SEO friendliness. 
To get these things right a website must be built for SEO from the ground up – retrofitting these things can often mean redoing the website. The good news is that Simplotel, out of the box, takes care of all this for your hotel website.
 

The content on your website

Now that we have gotten the technical aspects covered, the next most obvious thing about SEO is the content of the website. If your website’s content is about ice cream cones then your site will be indexed for ice cream cone searches and not for hotels. If your content is about a luxury hotel, then you won’t be indexed for budget hotels and consequently it is unlikely that you will show up for searches related to budget hotels.

Content also comes in many shapes. It includes the text on the website, the images that you put, the links you provide and the various tags (page titles page descriptions etc.). Each one of these have a significance and how and where you place them also matters. Content that is higher up on a page matters more than the content that is below. On things like page titles, the content that is to the left matters more than the content that is to the right. How you structure your content with various Headers (much like a word document) matters. How you name your images, how you name the links – they all matter.

All content on your website should be original content – copying of content from another website hurts your traffic – as the search engines and users skip past you believing you have nothing new to say. Adding fresh and relevant content has also shown to impact the SEO of a website.

There is also data about your hotel (meta data) that you can provide on your website, it is not visible to your customers but tells the bots the location, name, etc. of your hotel. Once again, Simplotel does this out of the box for your site.  Our experts write the content for your hotel website so that it is all set up well. This is another reason why our customers see a 3x plus growth in traffic.
 

Things happening outside your website

After the technology and the content on the website, there are things that happen outside your website that impact search engine optimization. These include your guest reviews, your listing on Google Maps and local listing sites, your mention in travel blogs, etc. – they all matter. Here are some suggestions,

  • Verify and own your Google My Business (GMB) page and make sure that the map marker is accurate.

  • Ensure that your hotel’s name, address and contact info is exactly the same on all online channels – your social media pages, local listings and classified listings. 

  • Get good reviews by taking care of customers and encouraging customers to write a glowing review. Also, respond to your reviews on various review channels time to time.

There are few silver bullets in SEO – so you must skin it with a thousand paper cuts. Please let us know your comments, questions and feedback at hello@simplotel.com.

Fight OTA Price Wars: How Dynamic Pricing Helps Hotels Win Direct Bookings

As a hotel owner, you've likely watched OTAs capture bookings by displaying lower prices while taking hefty commissions from your hard-earned revenue. With OTAs controlling anywhere from20% to 70% of hotel bookings depending on your property segment - with luxury hotels seeing around 30-40%OTA dependency while budget properties can reach up to 70% - the battle for direct bookings has never been more critical.

The solution? Dynamic pricing, a strategic weapon that helps you compete on price while maximizing revenue from your own website.

Beyond Fixed Rates

Strategic Applications

The Numbers

Fighting Price Parity

Technology Advantage

Understanding Dynamic Pricing: Beyond Fixed Rates

Dynamic pricing adjusts your room rates in real-time based on supply and demand, competitor pricing, and market conditions. Think of it like the vegetable market - onion prices fluctuate based on availability and demand. Your hotel rooms should work the same way.

When you have historical data showing higher weekend occupancy versus weekdays, why maintain static pricing? It's better to sell a room at a discounted weekday rate than leave it empty. This strategy may slightly impact your RevPAR (Revenue per Available Room), but it significantly improves your ADR (Average Daily Rate) and overall occupancy.

Strategic Applications of Dynamic Pricing

  • Festival and Event-Based Pricing: Major festivals or local events create massive demand spikes. Hotels using dynamic pricing during such events report revenue increases of 50% or more compared to static pricing. When Taylor Swift announces a concert in your city, smart hoteliers immediately adjust rates to capture that demand surge rather than selling out at regular prices.

  • Seasonal Optimization: Peak season rates should reflect market demand, while off-peak periods offer opportunities to attract price-sensitive travelers. Hotels implementing seasonal dynamic pricing strategies see 15% increases in average occupancy and 20% boosts in total revenue.

  • Day-Use Room Revenue: Don't overlook day-use opportunities. Business travelers, transit passengers, and locals seeking short stays represent untapped revenue streams. Dynamic pricing for these segments can add 5-10% to your overall room revenue.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Research shows that hotels using dynamic pricing achieve:

  • 15% increase in average occupancy rates
  • 20% boost in total revenue
  • 30% revenue spike during special events
  • Better competitive positioning against OTAs

With OTAs typically charging 15-20% commission on bookings, even modest increases in direct bookings through competitive dynamic pricing significantly impact your bottom line.

Fighting Price Parity Effectively

Dynamic pricing allows you to match or beat OTA rates on your direct channels while maintaining profitability. When you can adjust rates multiple times daily based on real-time market data, you're no longer at the mercy of OTA pricing strategies.

The Technology Advantage

Modern revenue management systems automate dynamic pricing decisions, analyzing competitor rates, demand patterns, and booking velocity to optimize pricing 24/7. This ensures you're always competitively positioned without manual intervention.

The bottom line: Dynamic pricing isn't just about maximizing revenue it's about reclaiming control of your pricing strategy and winning the direct booking battle against OTAs.