For Perth hotels and accommodation providers, the battle for bookings is fought on two fronts: against competitors down the street, and against the OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) like Booking.com and Expedia.
While OTAs charge 15-20% commission, they invest millions in website speed. If your direct booking website takes 5 seconds to load on a mobile phone, a potential guest won’t wait. They’ll bounce back to Google and book via the OTA—costing you margin.
This guide explains Core Web Vitals simply and shows how fixing them can increase your direct bookings.
The Metrics That Matter
Google measures your site against three specific metrics. You can check yours at pagespeed.web.dev.
1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - “The Loading Speed”
What it is: How long it takes for the main content (usually your hero image) to appear. Target: Under 2.5 seconds. Common Hotel Fail: Uploading a 10MB uncompressed image of the pool as the background. The Fix: Resize images to screen resolution, convert to WebP, and use a CDN.
2. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) - “The Responsiveness”
What it is: How quickly the site reacts when a user taps “Book Now” or opens the menu. Target: Under 200 milliseconds. Common Hotel Fail: Heavy JavaScript from chat widgets, weather plugins, and unoptimised booking calendars clogging the main thread. The Fix: Remove unused plugins; defer non-essential scripts.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - “The Stability”
What it is: Does the page jump around while loading? Target: Under 0.1. Common Hotel Fail: The page loads, the user goes to click “Rooms”, and suddenly the Booking Widget loads at the top, pushing the button down. The user misclicks. The Fix: Define set dimensions (CSS aspect-ratio) for all image and widget containers.
The OTA Trap
OTAs like Booking.com have engineering teams dedicated to passing these metrics. Their pages load instantly. If you area a boutique hotel in Fremantle or a resort in Scarborough, your website is your Digital Front Desk. A slow website is like making a guest wait 10 minutes to check in—they start their experience annoyed.
Case Study: Optimising a Booking Engine
We worked with a WA accommodation provider using a popular third-party booking engine.
- Problem: The widget added 3 seconds to load time and caused massive layout shifts.
- Solution: We built a custom “Facade” button. The heavy booking script only loaded after the user interacted with the “Check Availability” button, not on initial page load.
- Result: LCP dropped from 4.2s to 1.1s. Direct mobile bookings increased by 18%.
How We Build High-Performance Hotel Sites
At Amplify, we specialise in Headless Architecture for hospitality. This means we build the frontend of your site using ultra-fast technology (Astro), while keeping your preferred CMS (WordPress) or Booking Engine (SiteMinder) in the background.
You get the ease of management you’re used to, with the speed of an OTA.
Action Plan for Hotel Managers
- Audit: Run your site through PageSpeed Insights today.
- Compress: Ask your web team if images are being served in Next-Gen formats (WebP/AVIF).
- Evaluate: Are plugins (Chatbots, Popups) worth the speed penalty?
- Upgrade: If your site is on a generic $50 theme, it’s likely bloated code. Consider a custom performant build.
Ready to reclaim your direct bookings? Contact Amplify for a Core Web Vitals audit.
Related Reading: