Hotel Website Design: Don't Change Domain Names

This post is about another thing that drives us crazy while it hurts the businesses themselves. As the only travel website that connects direct to real lodging websites of all kinds, we probably view more of them than anyone else in the world. We link directly to over 140,000 lodging websites and have to check them constantly. Websites move, open and close every day. In many cases, those are bad moves. Never change your domain name, your internet address, unless it's absolutely necessary and there is no other option.

As we check our listings, for example, we find a bed and breakfast website that doesn't work. Sometimes they redirect properly and other times, the website just doesn't work. A customer would think, "did my favorite B&B close down? I guess they did. I'll have to go somewhere else." At AllStays, we eventually find the bad website link and do a search to find a new website for that same bed and breakfast and update our information. Before we found the change, customers are lost. All the links built over the years on other websites that point to this B&B are lost. Maybe it's a business directory, or the chamber of commerce. Maybe it's lodging sites like ours or maybe it's leading search engines like Google. Links are important on the internet. Some say they are most important thing. No matter what you believe about links and search engines, they do point others to your site. And that is a plus. You wouldn't go around handing out business cards and buying advertising and then move and change your phone number, would you? That is what you are doing when you move your domain name.

There was a time many years ago when you could put up a new website and be found right away. Those days are gone. A new website may take months to be found, if it is found at all. There are fairly good indicators that the age of a domain name is relevant on the internet. Like brick and mortar businesses, do you go to the business you know is good and that has been in town for 20 years or the one that just opened recently? You may eventually check the new one out but you trust the older one more.

Don't just change web addresses because you found a better one. Think long and hard about it if you are already established. And if you do feel that you have to change websites, at least find all the websites that are linking to you already and let them know of the change. Keep the traffic coming. Keep the old website and use it to advertise the new one. Don't let it die or even worse, be bought by someone else who takes your business traffic and name away from you.

We also know that there may be a reason why a website is lost. Web hosts go down or perhaps the owner wasn't really the owner. A domain name company may be crooked and not let the lodging owner keep the name or move it to another host or provider. Maybe the site was setup on some old free hosting site like Yahoo, Geocities or AOL. Those addresses don't look as professional in todays world. But again, keep that old site and point it to the new one. Don't make customers and your partners have to search for you. Most won't go out of their way to find you again.

Corporations change their site structure all the time. We constantly are updating and changing links for a thousand hotels under some big brand name. It's annoying and stupid but they are a corporation and that is what corporations do. They do stupid things. Some of them do this stupid thing every few months. A new marketing firm, a new manager or a new tech has to make an imprint on things so they change it. They don't realize that if they kept the same structure for years, they would benefit from more traffic and in turn reservations.