As of 26th of February 2021, only 45.15% of hotel websites are delivered via HTTPS. Exactly 3 years ago it was 22.47%. This is based on a set of ~875.000 hotel websites from all parts of the world.
This is an update to the Over 77% of Hotel Websites are Not Secured with HTTPS article that I have published 3 years ago.
Among countries with a large number of hotels, Switzerland is leading the chart with an impressive 60.28% HTTPS adoption rate (5,155 out of 8,552 lodging websites).
HTTPS Usage on Hotel Websites
It is interesting to note that some countries at the bottom of the chart were also at the bottom 3 years ago. For example:
- South Korea increased from 8.99% to 13.47%.
- India increased from 17.4% to 27.54%.
Some countries quickly jumped into the upper half. For example:
- Czech Republic increased from 9.69% to 44.45%.
- Italy increased from 15.18% to 44.46%.
- South Africa increased from 15.52% to 45.76%.
- Greece increased from 18.19% to 53.52%.
How to Get a free SSL Certificate
The most popular provider of free SSL certificates is Let’s Encrypt. Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority brought to you by the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group (ISRG).
Many popular hosting providers have full support for Let’s Encrypt. This means that you can automatically get a free SSL certificate installed for your domain(s) directly from cPanel or other account management software.
HermesThemes is hosted by SiteGround, one of the best rated WordPress hosting providers.
If your SiteGround account has been migrated to the new SiteGround Site Tools management panel, you can easily get a free SSL certificate from Dashboard > Security > SSL Manager.
If your hosting provider uses cPanel and has full support for Let’s Encrypt, you can find Let’s Encrypt in the Security section.
Simply select the domain that you want to add a SSL certificate to and click Install.
In just a few seconds your website will be able to be accessed via HTTPS.
If your website is powered by WordPress, you will have to install a plugin to redirect all your previous HTTP links and requests to HTTPS.
Really Simple SSL is probably the most popular plugin to help migrate a WordPress website from HTTP to HTTPS.
In conclusion
There is no real reason NOT to secure your website with a SSL certificate.
Hotel websites often handle sensitive information, even if they use an external hotel booking engine for bookings and payments.
So if you haven’t done this yet, now is a good time to do so!