In today’s digital age, potential guests have come to expect a high level of comfort, luxury, and accessibility when researching and booking hotels in Nigeria.
This has placed importance on how a hotel’s website represents the business and whether or not it creates a good first impression for new users and visitors.
One way Nigerian hotels can meet these expectations is by integrating virtual tours into their websites.
With virtual tours, potential guests can explore a hotel’s facilities and amenities in an interactive and engaging way, providing a better understanding of the hotel and its facilities.
In this article, let’s discuss ways Nigerian hotels can benefit from integrating virtual tours into their websites and how they can improve their potential guests’ experiences, increase bookings, better market the hotel, and save costs by embracing this innovative technology.
1. Improve User Experience
Making a visit to their website an entertaining experience is one of the ways that Nigerian hotels can benefit from integrating virtual tours into their websites.
Users spend an average of 52 seconds on websites, and this is partly because of the boring contents that creators put on sites.
With virtual tours, hotels can improve their site’s user experience by offering users informative and engaging tours of their hotels rather than boring images and texts.
Virtual tours allow potential guests to explore the hotel’s facilities and rooms in an interactive and engaging way.
This helps to provide a better understanding of the hotel’s layout, amenities, and overall ambiance before an in-person visit, making it easier for guests to make an informed decision based on what they’ve seen on the website.
2. Increase Bookings
In many ways, providing virtual tours can help guests make a more confident booking decision, which can lead to an increase in bookings and revenue for the hotel.
First, virtual tours allow potential guests to take a 360-degree tour of the hotel, its rooms, facilities, and amenities. This tour provides an immersive experience that helps guests get a feel for the hotel and create a personal connection before making a reservation.
In addition, virtual tours can be used to highlight the hotel’s key features with information on its facilities, such as its pool, restaurants, or fitness center. This gives potential guests an insight into why the hotel is a good choice for their stay.
With these amazing exploratory features that virtual tours provide, Nigerian hotels can experience a spike in bookings, as guests are more likely to book a hotel they have already explored through a virtual tour.
3. Effective Marketing Opportunities
If your hotel isn’t the Lagos Continental Hotel, the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, the Eko Hotels and Suites, or any other big-name hotel, then you definitely need to get your name out there.
Virtual tours present a fantastic marketing opportunity for hotels. If you can create an amazing virtual tour of your hotel, then be rest assured that many users who participated in the tour will recommend your hotel to their family, friends, and business associates.
It even gets better: with virtual tours, you don’t need to pay bloggers, influencers, and skitmakers for ads or spam Facebook with your marketing campaigns; all you have to do is tell an amazing story with your virtual tour, and you get social shares and recommendations from users and visitors.
Virtual tours can serve as a powerful marketing tool by showcasing the hotel’s unique selling points, helping to attract new customers, and setting the hotel apart from its competitors.
4. Increase Accessibility
Apart from an in-person visit, a virtual tour is the closest access potential guests can get to a hotel.
Whether they’re in Kaduna, Osogbo, Port Harcourt, or Lokoja, potential guests can enjoy a realistic experience of a hotel from their computer or mobile phone.
In short, virtual tours can be accessed from anywhere and at any time, making it easier for potential guests to explore the hotel from the comfort of their own homes, even if they’re on the other side of the globe.
This can be particularly beneficial for travelers who are unable to physically visit the hotel before making a booking.
5. Improve Website Visibility
A virtual tour can help a hotel’s website gain more traffic as search engines tend to prioritize websites with rich multimedia content, so a virtual tour of your hotel can help your website’s SEO.
With virtual tours, visitors also tend to spend more time on the site, which is an important ranking criteria and can help boost its position on search engine result pages.
In addition, virtual tours can be easily shared on the hotel’s website, social media platforms, and travel websites, which can help turn the website into a household name and attract more potential guests to the hotel.
6. Reduce the Number of Questions
Virtual tours serve as a virtual guide that can answer many questions that guests might have about the hotel, such as the size of the rooms, the view from the windows, and the location of various amenities and facilities.
This can reduce the number of questions that guests have, which can increase the likelihood that they’ll book a stay.
In addition, virtual tours can also guide guests on how to find things in their room, use equipment, and gain access to various services offered by the hotel.
7. Save Time and Money
Integrating virtual tours into a hotel’s website can be more cost-effective compared to traditional marketing methods, such as producing and distributing brochures or paying media platforms for advertisements.
Additionally, virtual tours can also reduce the need for in-person tours, which can save time and resources for both the guests and the hotel.
8. Competitive Advantage
A virtual tour is a great way for hotels to get a foot in the door of landing potential guests and give the hotel an edge over their competitors.
Hotels that offer virtual tours have a competitive advantage over those that don’t, as they can stand out from the crowd by providing guests with unique, interactive, and entertaining experiences that can help reduce uncertainty and speed up the decision-making process.
If you are in Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan or anywhere in Nigeria and needs a VR company, Insightful3D Studio is your preferred virtual tour/reality company. Trusted by tens of top brands, we help you craft virtual tours that sell your projects faster to its targeted audience. Contact Insightful3D today or call +234 906 000 6378.