Back in Venice when the itinerant population is at its most agreeable minimum. Although cold, overcast and misty with occasional showers, it’s no less magical and, as ever, an inordinate pleasure to be here. We unpacked as soon as we arrived, eager to see whether or not the large plastic chandelier bought for the pantomime (January) had survived in one piece. Thankfully, all was well as the huge suitcase was packed with rolls of bubble-wrap and newspaper, as well as all the other items needed for the performances.

Having unpacked and made some tea, it was onto the computer for a few hours work. A new hotels website is being launched this weekend and I need to ensure that we are all agreed as to the meta content. I have always been concerned about Google’s algorithms changing and being wrong-footed, like so many others. Thankfully, this hasn’t happened yet but we still need to be vigilant whilst ensuring client hotel websites outperform those of their competitors.

A leisurely start to the following day, Saturday, and later across to Peggy Guggenheim, where we are members, for lunch. Our only English treat when in Venice is to buy Saturday’s FT from the kiosk at Zattere and there was one left when I arrived. Peggy’s is always a pleasure and today is no exception. An hour with a glass of wine and the FT…bliss. I was later joined by my wife and lunch was simple but delicious, for me a penne with tomato sauce and parmesan.

What better way to start a brief sojourn in La Serenissima.

Having stayed at the Hilton Watford a few times, when I was very impressed by the reception team, we recently stayed at the Hilton Maidenhead and were rewarded by a very enthusuastic girl on reception (it makes such a difference and I’ve now come to expect it), a quiet room and an enjoyable time, especially appreciated as we were attending a funeral nearby. Now we have just stayed at the Hilton Gatwick where we were given a room in the new block on a deal that included airport parking for nine days. I have to stay, I thought it excellent value and the room was most agreeable. The quietest hotel room possible, even though it overlooked a main road. This has to be the best way of flying from Gatwick if you have to drive.

The staff were all extremely helpful but my chicken caesar salad at the bar in the evening was a disaster! Thankfully, I was not charged.

Hilton have developed a very good formula and their staff training pays dividends. The only poor experience we’ve experienced was on one of the occasions we needed to stay at the Hilton Watford. They had a room-only wedding celebration (a first for me) which went on for most of the night. Guests were cooking food outside beneath the room windows. Bizarre. Then they all went to bed at about 4am with a great deal of uproarious corridor noise. However, they didn’t charge us when we complained.

I’m also impressed by their points system. I’m heading for a free stay!

Hotel owners can always respond to damaging reviews whether false or not. However, the seed of doubt has been planted and the owner would say that, wouldn’t he? I’m writing this note because the latest newsletter from The Good Hotel Guide addresses this issue head-on. “(TripAdvisor) is wide open to abuse because of its failure to screen out collusive and malicious reviews.” You can read the full item here: Too many fakes.

The latest approach was from a video production company that was proposing a video for the hotel supported by statements like, “…we first gain a true understanding of the property we are going to work with in order to distill the USP.” Note “the property we are going to work with” and not the name of the hotel. Furthermore, the hotel in question has a series of videos on its website, so these people obviously hadn’t looked at it. Also, “…distill the USP”? What garbage!

Most of these approaches are from ‘luxury’ websites trying to persuade the hotels to be featured thereon in return for an annual fee and/or a commission on all bookings. Too many hotels are persuaded to subscribe because their own websites are not attracting the necessary traffic and are not converting what traffic they have into bookings.

Often the approach emails will state that an hotel’s website is not on page 1 of Google for the most relevant search phrases. These emails are spam and are written as a ‘catch-all’. No-one has spent any time researching the relevant search phrases for every hotel targeted. They simply don’t know.

It’s so easy to set up a luxury hotels website, simply by hooking up to one of the major booking engines. I could do it tomorrow. I could then spam hundreds of hotels with an irresistibly tempting offer and, because their own websites are not producing the bookings, several might well bite.

So, take control. Make sure you know how well your website is performing. The simplest way is to ensure your site is hooked up to Google Analytics, then you’ll know. You should be looking for over 2,000 search phrases per month finding your website and you should be checking which paid for sites are sending traffic, and how much, to your website. If you’re not happy, do something about.

Too many small, independent, luxury hotels are using portal websites, paying a fee and/or a commission in a vain effort to improve bookings. There is an ever increasing number of hotel booking engines that are approaching hotels with offers of a small fee to be included for a year. Pay a little more and your entry benefits from some bells and whistles. Similarly, there are those both well-known and not so well-known that take a commission on bookings via their websites.

Hotels rely on these websites because their own websites are not managed and therefore not performing as they should. Which brings me onto the website tags issue. Hotels should be constantly checking where each of their website pages appears in the Google ranking for specified search phrases. If a page is not in the top ten, then you need to tweak it and this could well include the meta tags. Of course, if your website is not fully content manageable, then this would cost you each time and so is probably not an option…hence the reliance on portal websites.

So, assuming you can update your own hotel website, update it and update it frequently. Keep measuring it against your competitors and monitoring its Google rankings.

Remember…the most popular pages on the websites of small independent luxury hotels, in addition to the Home page, are Accommodation, Rates and Special Offers/Breaks, not necessarily in that order. If you have a Late Availability or Last Minute page (and you should), then it would be in there as well. These then are the pages that should be most visible and therefore warrant most attention.