Tour Operator Web Design Essentials — How to Boost Your Bookings with Visuals

First impressions are the most lasting. When everything has a digital side today, your company’s website becomes your brand’s business card and oftentimes the touchpoint for your customers when they search for your services. Now ask yourself: would you recommend a website with a lame and uninspiring design to your friends, colleagues, or business partners? Probably not. As would 50% of respondents who hold firm that your company’s impression deeply depends on your company’s website looks.

This is especially true for tour operators, whose success in no small part depends on the visual appeal of their trip offers and travel destinations. The overall trend towards digitalization and the lockdown experience have contributed to the surge of online operations in the industry. 80% of travelers now want to book their trips entirely online, with Millennials and Gen Z leading the way.

What Makes a Good Travel Website Design?

A great website informs and sells, providing its users with a pleasant and remembering experience. No matter where you are with your website design (redesigning your old custom booking system or starting from scratch), you most certainly need to know what criteria define a good travel website design.

Essential Components of an Efficient Tour Operator Website Design

1. Functionality — the website meets business objectives and user needs

A good travel website should strive to ease the booking path for the user and shorten the time from picking the date to closing the deal and getting the travel itinerary in their mailbox.

Do not overcomplicate things, but rather make your design understandable and native, with familiar booking algorithms. Any type of search (for a button or information) should be short and effortless. A user-friendly itinerary planner brings more ROIs than an all-in-one system that no one can handle without having a tutorial course.

2. Simplicity and ergonomics — easy to understand and navigate

Users can effortlessly find what they are looking for thanks to a clear web of links and a logically arranged menu. The path to any point on the website is ensured by customer-centric navigation. Call-to-action buttons are clear and visible.

3. Visual appeal — pleasing and appropriate aesthetics, consistent branding

The price tag is not always the defining factor in purchasing. It’s a common case when travelers make bookings based on attraction descriptions, hotel cards, packages, etc. Some offers that look too plain and uninspiring can go under the radar and end up in the archive bin.

However, great visuals play the defining role only if the user is familiar with the booking flow. Something weird, new, or strange may only deter them from completing the deal. Always conduct A/B testing to find out what can drive your visitor away.

WHAT CONSTITUTES THE VISUAL PART?

• Invigorating photos. Perhaps the easiest yet the most important aspect of your website’s aesthetics. Ignite your visitors’ desires with unique shots of their dream destinations, and make them discover hidden gems they’ll definitely want to see. Abandon clichés (e.g., if someone’s offering a trip to France, you see the Eiffel Tower in the image (boring!) as if there were no other landmarks in France). Make a selection ranging from nature landscapes to local people and food, activating all senses.
• Hero section. The very first thing your visitors see when they land on your website, and they are most likely to stay on it if their eye catches something appealing, intriguing, reviving, tempting, etc. Your audience should relate to the design of the hero section, attracted by positive emotions it evokes.
  You can upgrade your hero section with such elements as background videos presenting destinations on offer, image slideshows with top picks, a quick search filter for destinations and offers, and attention-grabbing headlines.
• Color accents and patterns. Your website UI/UX must evoke relevant and positive emotions. What looks good for a developer and a designer might distract or disengage the user, even the color combinations and the color tone you picked. Thus, for instance, the shades of calm blue are often associated with wellness and travel, while red is more about entertainment or food.

4. High-quality content — relevant, well-written, and regular updates

Do not write content for the purpose of having more texts on your online reservation platform. Your texts should be relevant to the goal of your website, inform your visitors, and create value for them. Check them for errors, as even the slightest grammar mistakes can raise doubts about the quality of your services. Do not forget to update the content and add brand-new texts. Outdated materials create the impression that you are out of business.

5. Efficiency — fast loading time, easy to change

The internet speed is getting better worldwide and users no longer want to wait. As found by GoodFirms, slow loading time is one of the major reasons why visitors abandon websites. And it’s one of the major factors in Google rankings.

• 2.5 seconds on desktop and 8.6 seconds on mobile (ToolTester)
• A good page time is 0–2 seconds (Portent)

More on how to boost your website loading speed can be found in a great article by HubSpot.

6. Safety and security — we can trust you with sensitive information

What personal data you store and how you do it are primary concerns for your users, especially if you store your clients’ payment details. Pay special attention to checkout forms and any forms and interfaces requiring personal data input. They should look reliable, familiar, and in line with the best practices. Anything weird, totally new, or chaotic may raise suspicions. Keep your software up-to-date and apply strong security measures.

7. Contact form/customer support — questions must be answered

Make sure you have a clear tool for your visitors to bombard you with queries and questions. Do not forget to address them promptly and professionally. Your options include: live chat, contact form, FAQs, direct contact details (phone number, messengers, email).

8. Mobile optimization — last but a must

We may expect that by 2031, the mobile travel booking market will hit the figure of $612 billion. This booking method is on the constant increase as people tend to make or change their travel plans on the go. It can be done through dedicated travel booking apps or mobile-optimized versions of travel booking websites. To grab your share of that billion pie, think through a mobile-responsive design that would smoothly adapt the layout and page contents of your travel portal software to the size of the screen. Follow typical behavior patterns and thumb-zone mapping. Of special importance is the checkout page, where your customers should have clear designs with visual buttons to make their payment as smooth as possible via mobile devices. This way, you’ll get higher search rankings, as Google favors the responsive design approach.

What Else to Add?

Content-wise and design-wise, there are dozens of features you can add to your website to cater to the needs of your audience. Just feel that dividing line, not to make things overly complicated.

• Payment integration. The more your website visitors can do with your booking engine, the higher the chances they will convert to clients, bringing other clients. People do not really like to say goodbye to their money, so if you make this process painless and smooth, they’ll be thankful to you. Include several payment options (debit/credit cards, PayPal, bank payment options, etc.) and do not forget about security of these transactions.
• Videos. Videos on a website can create an engaging and interactive experience, encouraging users to spend more time exploring the site and its content. After all, videos come third in the paradigm of consumer appreciation after photos and colors.
• Customer reviews. Word-of-mouth marketing can be way more powerful that regular tools your sales unit applies. It doesn’t really matter whether you know the person who left a few words: even if you do not include the review into your website layout, your customer will most likely google such review aggregators as TripAdvisor and find them for themselves.
• Social media integration. People like to share their experiences and interact with each other. Let them have your services as another cool topic to discuss. If having social media followers is one of our goals, then this point is certainly a nice-to-have.
• Innovations. Though quite expensive, such technologies as VR and AR are frequently seen on premium tour operator websites, as they have a positive impact on your brand’s overall impression. Another rising trend is AI chatbots that can provide 24/7 customer support from details on tour options to providing personalized recommendations to your clients. Adding elements like this elevates your professional approach to services. However, know your limits. An interactive tour operator website design that loads for minutes will do more harm than good.

Design Mistakes to Avoid

The industry evolves along with travelers’ expectations, so designing your website is a never-ending process if you want to stay competitive over time. We have compiled a list of the most common mistakes to make your journey less bumpy.

Above are design errors, mostly visible at first sight to your visitors when they land on the website. However, there are deeper and less vivid shortcomings that are even more vital for your conversion rate. Check our experts’ tips on how to make your website design effective and in line with your travel business.

• Mind the amount of information you share with your visitors. Present only those pieces that are relevant to the goals of your website.
• Do not change color patterns of your brand entirely and do not create something totally different. You must still be recognizable.
• Try not to fit too many features per square cm. Instead, focus on your primary functionality, make it easy to use, navigate, and find. All other features categorized as additional options must be natively hidden and do not interfere with the primary flow.
• Do not reinvent the wheel when there is a common-practice solution everyone expects from a travel website. Something irregular, weird, or drastically deviating from common practice may raise suspicions and decrease the visitor’s desire to pay for your services.
• Integrate design slowly, in parts, so it won’t be shock content for your users. If you change drastically your website overnight, many users may abandon you. Booking.com won’t change its website as the well-known and recognizable design dominates over the need to reinvent something new.
• Do not overcomplicate things and do not create complex workflows for basic operations. Travel websites should be easy to use and navigate.
• Keep to the comfortable booking pattern of your users, and do not try to change their web browsing and info search habits.
• Do not run for fashion trends and try to look modern, sacrificing your users’ comfort. As Zara proved, you may lose more than you planned to get by trying to ride the wave.

First Impressions Are Half the Battle

As they say, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. The travel journey often starts with the digital step in the form of e-tourism solutions, so investing your time and money into a user-friendly and appealing website with honed booking processes will pay off in the long run. Highlight through your design what makes you special and how you differ from rivals and keep monitoring customer feedback and website analytics to maintain your website in the sales-focused area.

You may feel uncomfortably overwhelmed with all the choices and templates for an interactive tour operator web design. Keep it calm, we are here to help. GP Solutions has gone through many designs in the travel industry and will provide any assistance you need. Our designers will be waiting for your call.