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Conversions? Here’s what matters most, according to Google

Listen to Google: We all know mobile increasingly drives bookings and Google wrote a think piece this week suggesting site design matters more than anything else when it comes to conversions, and it matters more than online reviews and loyalty programs for high value travelers. It suggests investing on the user experience beyond the first click and offers five principles for an effective landing page. Hint #1: more than half will leave if it takes more than 3 seconds to load the page. Very practical advice here. —Jeff Weinstein

And Airbnb too while you’re at it: Yep, I’m going there – linking you to Airbnb for Work research. Why? Because all I heard about at ALIS were issues related to labor. Airbnb has written a piece about trends about the needs about modern workers. The nut: Professionals today want to be physically and mentally engaged beyond daily project or role-related challenges. And they want to feel optimistic and proud of the role their company plays in the world. Keep working on the pride factor, hoteliers. I know you are trying. —JW 

Size < Luxury: Who needs a big hotel room when you’ve got luxury design? So, goes the thought process of those looking to capture the guest who can’t live without an Instagram-worthy hotel. “Lean luxury” equals smaller room sizes and fewer amenities and the fact that simple designs photograph well. The goal with lean luxury? To be “far more functional and user-experience-oriented than a standard grand hotel room,” according to Business Insider. —Chloe Riley 

Meituan makes moves: This Medium piece gives a full history of the growing e-commerce player Meituan, but if you scroll towards the end, you’ll see that, similar to the other Chinese e-commerce giants, the company has recently tapped into the hotel and travel sectors. With strategic investments from Priceline and a vast user base, Meituan launched the product in early 2017 and has attracted more than 340,000 hotels and 16,000 tourist attractions all over China to join the platform. But it’s the company’s advantage in big data and platform stickiness which has generated those fast-growing numbers and put Meituan into a head-to-head competition against Ctrip, the OTA market leader in China. Keep an eye on this one. —CR

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