Case Study
Business Challenge
Located in South Beach the Shelborne is one of the largest independent hotels in Florida. Stuart Weintraub, the Shelborne's General Manager, was faced with a challenge common to many of today's independently owned and operated hotels: "How can we significantly increase online bookings coming directly through our hotel web site?" According to a recent survey compiled by PhoCusWright, most hoteliers report that less than 5% of their reservations are being made directly via their hotel's own reservation system. The majority of online reservations are coming from consolidators and intermediaries who provide independent hotels with little direct control over inventory and pricing and create the risk of long term rate and brand erosion.
The POWERi Solution
Working with the Shelborne's sales and marketing team, POWERi designed, developed and deployed a new web site for the Shelborne Beach Resort. The new site incorporates POWERi's proprietary online reservation and guest information system (ReGIS). This system was the key to increase online sales
because it gave potential customers the possibility to review room availability and rates, as well as book a reservation and get an immediate confirmation number online in three very easy steps.
After completing the new web site and installing ReGIS, POWERi initiated a series of digital marketing campaigns intended to build web site traffic. These campaigns included HTML and rich media emails targeted directly to demographically selected travel agents and consumers. Additionally, POWERi has implemented a series of search engine optimization procedures designed to increase the hotel's rankings among the most popular search engines.
The Results
In its first two weeks of operation, ReGIS generated the same amount of online reservations made in the 12 months previous to its implementation.
In 2006, the system accounted for over $1 million in reservations.
Currently for 2007, online bookings account for about 25% of total bookings. Year by year, online bookings as percentage of total reservations have increased. We expect this trend to continue, since every day more and more customers use the internet to make their reservations.
According to Stuart Weintraub, the Shelborne's General Manager, "The new reservation system is easy to use and to administer. Our sales and marketing staff have complete and instantaneous control over our inventory. We can monitor demand and have the flexibility to change pricing in real-time. The design is clear and concise, with an exceptionally well-designed navigation system that enables users to view room and price information with ease."
Currently, hotels that cannot offer immediate online confirmation of the reservation are losing customers. In a competitive market, having this option in the hotel’s web site is a must.
