WTM 2015: SiteMinder unveils website creator aimed at independent hotels

WTM 2015: SiteMinder unveils website creator aimed at independent hotels

A website creator that combines best practice in hotel e-commerce with designs for independent hoteliers is to be offered by cloud platform SiteMinder.

A website creator that combines best practice in hotel e-commerce with designs for independent hoteliers is to be offered by cloud platform SiteMinder.

The Canvas platform will enable hoteliers to be able to create and manage websites by selecting from a range of templates. These are purposefully packaged for guided selling by design and user experience experts.

Hotel owners will be able to customise their own pages and preview those changes before making the decision to publish them online.

Hotel customers will pay a low, flat monthly fee and have the option to seamlessly integrate the product with their internet booking engine and SiteMinder’s Channel Manager.

SiteMinder co-founder and managing director, Mike Ford, said: “For years, SiteMinder has provided a platform that successfully enables direct, commission-free bookings as well as the most powerful online distribution in the market.

“The launch of Canvas is about further empowering the world’s independent hoteliers who want full ownership, control and amplification of their most profitable channel – their website.

“Canvas is about enhancing the independent hotelier’s ability to compete in today’s consumer-led internet economy.

And, for SiteMinder, it’s about delivering on our goal of breaking down barriers for the world’s hoteliers, through easy-to-use, affordable technology that challenges the ever-increasing complexities they face daily to market and sell their rooms online.”

He added: “Guests often don’t know how great a hotel is, because the first impression they had when they visited the website was poor and they immediately looked elsewhere. And this is assuming those guests found the website. Many of them are barely visible in search engines.

“Canvas was designed specifically with independent hoteliers in mind, many of whom we have witnessed first-hand to be disadvantaged by their lack of technical or design expertise – and their constrained budget to acquire this expertise.

“For this reason, we wanted to make sure Canvas was intuitive, responsive and search-optimised, so these hoteliers could be found and stay up-to-date, when they wanted to.

“It purposefully brings together only the things a guest needs to make a booking decision online, and removes all the noise that turns them away.

“We want to start small. We’ve learnt a lot from our beta and live customers, and it is important to us that we continue to grow the product with our learnings, so we can best meet the changing needs of who this is for – the independent hotelier.”



Before and after using SiteMinder’s new Canvas tech