Anatomy of a Hotel Website Events Page

No matter what city or town your hotel is in, local events are taking place all the time. Events and activities can be a valuable vehicle for revenue if leveraged properly.

Your hotel doesn’t have to be in a big city to capitalize on local events and activities. An Events page on a hotel website can even promote things like a football game, concert, community festival or charity fundraiser.

The key to an effective events page isn’t necessarily having internationally known events in your site, it’s simply following website best practices, and offering your website visitors the information they need to make an informed booking.

Boost SEO Juice by Listing Events

Keywords are words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines, which will provide them with a list of website results. If a travel shopper is seeking a hotel close to a particular autumn fair, a college homecoming game, or a popular local craft market, don’t you want your hotel to be presented in the results?

By listing upcoming events on the hotel website, you are providing travel shoppers with the information they crave, and serving up some quality keywords to search engines. When crawling your website, engines like Google will recognize your content, increasing your chances of being displayed on the search engine results page (SERP).

Add Value by Showcasing Interesting Events

While travel shoppers love a deal, what they are really seeking when choosing a hotel is value. By showcasing local events and activities near your property, you can point out some things that travel shoppers may not have known about. If a travel shopper is coming to town to visit a local shopping center, and they learn on your website that there is also a craft festival that they’re interested in, you could gain longer bookings with happier guests.

A wonderful way to add value is to partner with local events and activities to offer a promotion to your guests. Can you promote discounted tickets to the zoo, or a complimentary ice cream at the football game? Make your partnerships and promotions clear on your Events page and the value will be undeniable!

Don’t forget to inform travel shoppers of free local events they can participate in during their stay. Including this information on your website may be the deciding factor in a guest choosing to stay in your hotel or come to your area. Customers who feel like they have received good value for their money are more likely to recommend your property, or even pay a return visit!

Link with Intention

Search engines like Google like to see websites linking to other quality websites. It helps the search engine understand what your page is about, so that it can be presented to the appropriate audience. If some of the local events you’re promoting have websites, you can link to them.

Linking is a good practice, but it’s important not to overdo it. If your web page is packed with links out to other sites, you risk losing your website visitor to another site. Plus, a page full of links might appear like spam to Google.

Choose your strongest 2 or 3 events to link to. In some cases, those events might have featured accommodations on their websites and may be willing to link to your hotel site – an added bonus!

Update Regularly

One thing search engines like Google definitely like to see is fresh, relevant content being updated on a regular basis. Your events page is a natural place to update content, as events will pass and new ones will come up.

With Vizlly, it’s easy to update your events page. In a matter of moments you can remove past events and add in upcoming ones, ensuring your page is fresh, up to date, and gives travel shoppers the information they want to see.

Host Events of Your Own

Is your hotel events page looking sparse? You don’t necessarily have to wait around for an interesting local event to promote. Host your own! Comedy nights, concerts, and themed parties are terrific events that can draw a crowd of both hotel guests and town locals. These nights can occur on a regular basis and be promoted on your website, along with social media.

Similarly, if there is a local charity looking for a venue for one of their events and you have available space, why not offer the premises and promote the event on your website? It’s a good opportunity to give back to the community, and gives you some added content to include on your website events page.

The Thunderbird Inn does a terrific job on their Annual Events page. Popular local events are presented in a list format, ensuring the most SEO impact. The website calls out popular, interesting events (like the Weiner Dog Races!) that travel shoppers may not know about, and links are used intelligently.

In addition to the content on your hotel's Events page, it's important to include the relevant metadata so that search engines like Google can understand and rank your page. As a Vizlly SEO customer, our team will write and insert title tags, headings, and meta descriptions according to best practices to ensure your events page meets all search engine technical requirements. 

Interested in applying these best practices to your own hotel website events page? Check out this community article on how to create a text and image page on your Vizlly website.