At Sitemorse we published our 2019 Q3 Hotels INDEX this week. The Hotels INDEX has been published quarterly since 2015 and ranks the websites of 158 hotels based on User Experience, Search Engine Optimisation and Governance, Risk and Compliance.

Congratulations go to Hyatt Residence Club for retaining first place with a score of 6.8/10. Also, congratulations are due to Renaissance Hotels for being the most improved, moving up the table 40 places.

If we focus purely on Accessibility, then there are some notable statistics:

• No Hotel scored 8 or higher, indeed the highest score was 5.
• 86% of Hotels scored 3 or less
• Over 57% of Hotels actually scored zero

Only seven Hotels improved their accessibility score from the last quarter, while 6 scored lower. 15 hotels failed all of the WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA tests on every page.

PDFs have this quarter improved, in Q2, 34% of checked PDFs passed accessibility tests, however, in Q4 40% more PDFs passed accessibility tests (a rise of 6%).

Making websites accessible is law - in the US there is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and in the UK the Equalities Act 2010.

We’ve already seen that in the US that lawsuits alleging web sites discriminating against people with disabilities are increasingly common and there is nothing to suggest that this won’t continue.

The INDEX was produced on 7^thJuly 2019 and in its preparation, we ran over 95 million tests, checks and measures across nearly 295,000 URLs. 

The Top Ten Hotel Websites are:

1. Hyatt Residence Club
2. Firmdale Hotels
3. Maybourne Hotel Group
4. Adagio Aparthotel
5. AC Hotels Marriott
6. Hilton Grand Vacations
7. Carlson Rezidor Corporate
8. Guoman
9. Grand Mecure
10. Macdonald Hotels

Five Most Improved:

• Renaissance Hotels
• Macdonald Hotels
• Raffles Hotels & Resorts & Swissotel
• Red Carnation Hotels
• Penta Hotels

The full 2019 Q3 Hotelsresults can be found here: Sitemorse Hotels INDEX