As you know, everyone is fighting for leads these days, so you cannot afford to confuse or discourage someone from booking with your hotel when you finally get their attention. This, sadly, is something that is often done by far too many hoteliers when it comes to attracting the visually impaired guest. This is especially true of those hotels that have daily blogs managed by staff members that don’t understand all the nuances of how to properly create a blog entry or load visuals.
The Importance of Alt Text
If the person that runs your blog cannot answer the question, “What is alt text,” you have a very serious problem, for several reasons. First and foremost is the fact alt text is needed to make the website ADA compliant. If the alt text on the website has not been filled out for media, it is imperative that you address it immediately.
Secondly, alt text is extremely important for the SEO of the website. A search engine cannot physically see, so alt text serves as its eyes. By giving a proper description, the image, its alt text, and your content work together to tell search engines the full story of the blog entry.
The third component, however, is what we really want to discuss today, and that is how alt text helps you provide more information to the visually impaired guest that is searching the web and relying on your worded description of the image to learn more about your property.
Filling Out Alt Text for Hotel Blogs and Websites
The beauty of most of today’s website platforms is that anyone can learn how to use them in about an hour of watching tutorial videos on YouTube. That, unfortunately, also happens to the downside. For a director of marketing that does not truly understand the backdoor of a website, an intern with even moderate WordPress experience could convince the director he or she is a true expert. The next thing you know, the keys to the store are handed over and unbeknownst to the director, the full capabilities of the website are not being used.
The alt text feature is not very complex, but it is important, especially, as we stated, for the visually impaired traveler. If you are in the backdoor of your website, there will usually be a media or featured image tab, depending on the platform. On WordPress, if the featured image is not part of the template, you can add a plugin to add it to the website.
When you are adding an image, after uploading it, you should automatically have a new sidebar opened to fill out the details of the photo. As you can see in the photo below, there is a box on the featured image called “alt text” at the top:
This particular image was used for an article on how to make your resume stand out to get noticed by hiring managers. Before deciding on how to describe the photo, I used as longtail keyword tool I have to show me what relevant keywords were being used on this subject. I came up with “resume writing tips” and “get resume noticed,” so they were my choices for this particular photo.
Even though this is not a travel or hotel blog, still take notice of the way the alt text is worded, as though the keywords are working off each other to tell a small story while also being brief and to the point. Even if they are read in conjunction with each other, they still make sense.
Keep It Brief, but Be Descriptive
For a hotel blog, you are going to be uploading pictures of rooms, the pool, food and beverage, etc. You need to be as descriptive as possible in as few words as possible to drive home the point for the visually impaired website visitor.
As an example, let’s talk about the hotel pool. To add an image that just says pool tells the visually impaired website visitor absolutely nothing, However, using alt text such as “outdoor 8-foot pool with bar” tells them exactly what the hotel features. If you have a picture of the bar where you have big comfy chairs with a fireplace, your alt text might say something like “oversized bar lounge chairs by fireplace.” The idea here is to paint an accurate and enticing picture with as few words as possible. All the while, keeping SEO in mind to help the page rank better for search engines.
Now, I know what you may be thinking… It is just a picture; it should not take this much work. The fact that you thought that means thousands of other hoteliers go through every day with that thought. Let them keep thinking that way while you fill out the alt text properly and make your hotel more attractive to the visually impaired guest. It is pretty amazing when you think about it. Something that may take an extra two or three minutes to do properly could literally result in hundreds of room bookings every year in a single market segment that is completely ignored in this industry. Think of it in terms of room sales in that if you get just one booking a day, every day, you have more than likely sold enough rooms collectively to sell out your hotel for a full day every year, at least.
Is your hotel ADA compliant? Do your managers think out-of-the-box for ideas such as this to drive sales and make your hotel more profitable? If your property or hotel organization needs better managers, it’s time to call JDI. Joseph David International is ranked as a top hotel recruiter because we don’t just find managers, we find the ideal manager for your specific needs. For more information about our hospitality recruiting services, please click here.