Choosing a hotel via online, in India or anywhere else is pretty much the same, has always been not easy especially for first-timers to try hotels they’ve never booked before. Choosing the wrong hotel can literally spell disaster to a long-planned vacation. To lessen the risk of picking the wrong hotel, people tend to go look at online reviews, but then these online reviews can be falsified, and there’s always this doubt whether a review was from a real customer or from a so-called “PR consultant” paid to expound only on the pros of a particular hotel. In cases where you’ll be going to another country you’ve never been to; how do you know which hotels will suit your needs? You cannot really tell unless you have experienced it firsthand or at least a relative or someone you trust had been there and told you that a particular hotel is good or bad or just okay.

Apart from reviews, discerning customers are now really taking advantage of web analytics like Alexa.com ranking. Alexa.com can compare website traffic statistics and is the most trusted source of online statistics. So what if one website has more traffic than the other website, does that change the service of a hotel or the quality of service of a particular hotel? The power of Alexa.com’s ranking statistics is that it shows people are showing interest in a particular hotel’s website than the other hotels’ websites. Say if one hotel is ranked higher consistently in Alexa.com, it means more people are visiting their site and probably many more people are actually booking there.

Among the hotels in India, HHI Bhubaneswar’s website Hhibhubaneswar.com has garnered a higher Alexa.com ranking of 938,378th as compared to other India-based hotels’ websites like

  1. Swostihotels.com – Ranked 1.322.877th
  2. Thecrown.in – Ranked 5,745,860th
  3. Thepresidencyindia.com – Ranked 3,499,455th
  4. Palheights.com – Ranked 5,339,781th
  5. Hotelsandystower.com – Ranked 3,119,510th
  6. Lafranklin.com – Ranked 4,884,803rd
  7. Hotelnewmarrion.com – Ranked 5,946,125th
  8. Empireshotel.com – Ranked 4,473,362nd
  9. Vitshotel.com – Ranked 1,129,535th
  10. Hotelseetal.in – Ranked n/a

HHI

There are a couple of India-based hotel websites that had garnered higher Alexa.com ratings than Hhibhubaneswar.com like Mayfairhotels.com  and Tridenthotels.com hotels-in-Bhubaneswar but there are still other important factors like engagement metrics to look into a website aside from just the Alexa.com ranking like Daily Pageviews Per Visitor, Daily Time on Site and Bounce Rate.

The Daily Pageviews Per Visitor is the metric that says how many pages were viewed by a visitor from a website. A higher Daily Pageviews Per Visitor means that a visitor took a look at more pages on the website and it confirms that it is a true website visitor and not just an accidental passerby.

The metric of Daily Time on Site tells how long a site visitor stayed on a particular website. The higher the number means that people visiting the website is spending more time reading the contents of the website, so a longer time translates to more content were actually read.

The Bounce Rate is the metric in percentage that tells how many visitors moved away from the website after viewing one page.  A higher bounce rate is actually bad because it means you’re getting maybe a good redirection from links from other websites or from advertisements but people leave immediately after seeing a page. So a lower bounce rate figure is desired by websites to tell them that most of their visitors are not just there accidentally but are really looking at information posted on their website.

The two other hotels may have a higher Alexa.com ranking but Hhibhubaneswar beat those sites on all engagement aspects with a Daily Pageviews Per Visitor of 3.4, meaning each visitor looked at 3 to 4 pages on the Hhibhubaneswar.com website, the highest among all mentioned above websites. Then each visitor stayed at least 6.33 minutes, which is the longest among all the aforementioned websites above. Other sites are on the 3 to 4-minute figure when it comes to Daily Time on Site. The Bounce Rate of 29% means only 29 out of 100 visitors left the site after viewing a page, is the lowest among all other websites mentioned.  The other sites are hovering on the 37% to 57% figure when it comes to bounce rate.

Even though Hhibhubaneswar.com is third in Alexa.com ratings among all the websites mentioned above, meaning the other two may have had a few more site visits; however, Hhibhubaneswar.com leads the way when it comes to visitor engagement, which means that more people are not just looking at the website but are actually inquiring, looking at the pictures of the hotel amenities like rooms and other facilities, reserving a room, and actually booking a room.

Higher engagement means that more people trust your brand. Of course, a higher Alexa.com ranking is desired, but a better website engagement score means that Hhibhubaneswar is the most trusted online site for booking hotels in this part of the world. Having a high trustworthiness indicator is quite important especially when personal information is being divulged like name, address and credit card information when people are paying online.

The key really on deciding to book a hotel online is to look up first at the top 5 or top 10 sites at Alexa.com because this will show which hotels are interesting in general to most people, and then look at their engagement figures to really gauge which ones had more page views, had more people stayed longer on a website and which ones had fewer bounce rates. Knowing these important figures before deciding can be truly helpful because picking the right hotel is just truly an essential part of a successful and memorable travel experience.