Chinese travelers are heading out to international destinations in droves, and they are quickly earning the reputation of being one of the most powerful traveler segments in the tourism market.
These tech-savvy travelers are highly interested in mobile search and booking, and they don’t have a lot of patience for hotels and activity providers who don’t live up to their standards.
For instance, they want the websites they are browsing to load within 4.8 seconds (33.1 seconds is the actual average) – and nearly 85% of European websites fail to load within that time frame.
The speed of your small hotel’s website is an important factor in search engine optimisation (SEO). The major search engines have always considered this to be a necessary component of what’s deemed as a ‘good’ website. This is because it’s what people want.
A recent study by CDNetworks found that 60% of European websites take 5 times longer to load for users in China, and it’s not even the fault of the website providers.
It’s the result of the ‘Golden Shield’, or the intense firewall that was implemented by the Chinese government.
This firewall actively:
Ultimately, this results in extremely slow load times.
Despite the fact that Chinese travelers know about the firewall and understand its impact on their search results, 50% believe that European brands can and should overcome those challenges.
So, if your hotel website has a slow site speed in China, it’s having a big impact on your brand. Here’s how:
You need to partner with the major Chinese online travel agents (OTAs), such as Ctrip.
These OTAs will provide you with a direct link to Chinese consumers, and the OTA results will load as quickly as Chinese consumers prefer.
The best way to connect with these powerful OTAs in China is through a channel manager, like the one provided by Little Hotelier’s all-in-one solution.
Many small hotels are worried they won’t be able to manage more channels, but this is where an online reservation system comes in. Using a pooled inventory model, a modern system like Little Hotelier can reduce your chances of being double-booked, but you sell as many rooms as possible, through as many booking sites as possible.
See how it works with our on-demand demo videos.
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