The Mothership of Your Brand

The brand site is the mothership of new media. It is a website that should convey your brand at every turn. It is a repository of information and a transaction engine for new media. It is the place where your brand is projected and potentially protected. It is a source of information. It is a device to improve or enhance service while the experience is being enjoyed on the property. It’s a transactor. Ultimately, it can even be a relationship builder for the hotel.

Your brand site needs to be consistent. It needs to be consistent for the user regardless of the device that’s used (a PC, a tablet, a mobile phone). It also needs to be able to interact easily with internal systems like the centralized reservation system or the property management system as well as externally with online travel agency (OTA) sites, with search engines, with social media sites, and for that matter, with mobile devices with regard to particular applications.

And finally it needs to be efficient. Efficient for the user, and efficient for the hotel in terms of its ability to transact execute, provide information.

As brand sites in the hospitality market continue to evolve, it’s important that you see what’s out there and how other brands—including your competition—are leveraging their sites to serve a multitude of important functions. Are they meeting the all of the above criteria? Are you?