Are you concerned about how safe and secure your hospitality website is? If not, you should be because there have never been as many online threats to websites as there is now. Despite these increased threats, there are many ways you can prevent them from affecting your business. Below are some of the most important reasons why every hospitality business needs a secure website.
1. You Want to Maintain Your Business Reputation
If you don’t introduce data security procedures and you eventually have security problems, this will affect your business’s reputation. Once this happens, it can be difficult to regain the trust you have built up in your market.
However, some simple steps will ensure that your reputation never gets tarnished. Firstly, you or someone in your organization should complete a relevant information security degree provided by a recognized college or university such as Norwich University. Once you or someone else representing your hospitality business completes an online information assurance program or similar course, this will be a clear indication to other people that you take online security seriously and it is more likely to enhance your company’s reputation.
2. It’s Expected by Today’s Consumers
Modern customers are used to dealing with reputable, reliable online businesses that have their best interests at heart and they expect these businesses to have a secure website. Where possible, you should indicate that your website is secure and that you continually monitor it and update it so that it’s safe for your online visitors to interact with other people, they can make payments safely, and they can carry out other activities on your website in a safe way.
3. More Potential Customers Will Chose to Deal with Your Business
Ultimately, you want as many people as possible to trust your website, interact with it, and make online bookings. If you can guarantee that your hospitality website is safe and secure, more people will be inclined to deal with you and your business through your website. This, in turn, leads to more sales and a healthier bottom line for your business.
Many people are now aware of the HTTPS URL in the browser, and will avoid sites that do not offer this level of security. Google and the other search engines are also not ranking non-HTTPS sites high these days. Just by ignoring this one piece of security, you could be missing out on customers, and driving away those who do happen to find your website – neither is ideal.
4. Getting Your Website Online Again is Expensive and Time-Consuming
If your website is not secure and it gets hacked, this can be a major inconvenience and it might take a while to get your website up and running once again. While your website is being worked on and is not available, you could lose a lot of bookings and you might also have to foot the bill for the recovery work. Depending on the size of your company, this could cripple you. Amazon, for example, claimed to lose over $60,000 per minute when they experienced downtime in 2013. Although this is an extreme example, you can see how large the implications can be.
5. It Could Result in Legal Issues
Most hospitality websites will need to take money via the platform. Whether you accept payment in the form of debit or credit cards, or via payment platforms like PayPal and Money Bookers, you need to ensure that you keep all of your customers information secure.
In the worst-case scenario, customers details could be compromised or people could lose money if your website is attacked. This could lead to legal action and it could damage your business financially, as well as ruin its reputation.
When you’re in the hospitality industry, it’s essential to have a reliable, secure website. If this is not the case, you need to change this situation as quickly as possible for the five reasons mentioned above.
Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.
Learn more
A secure online payment processing protocol allows a business to take payments easily. These payments can be handled simply by the system, and the ...
The Internet has become a major player in every business. In particular, ecommerce has become an industry with massive implications for any compan ...
Online marketing is one of the best marketing techniques that most businesses use today to increase their revenues through online sales. However, ...
Internet shopping is the hot new thing of the moment right now. All over the world, an increasing number of companies are redirecting their attent ...
When you start your own business, sometimes the only thing you have is your reputation. The better that is, the more likely you will find new cust ...
