How Billesley Manor Hotel & Spa increased direct bookings by 77% YoY with Revinate
- HOTEL TYPE: Group
- SOLUTIONS USED: Revinate Marketing, Revinate Guest Feedback
- REGION: EMEA
- GOAL: Drive more direct bookings to reduce reliance on OTAs
- STRATEGY: Advanced email segmentation and personalization
- RESULTS: 11x ROI in the last 12 months
Meet the customer
My job is all about driving revenue, and the most profitable source of revenue is direct bookings. Revinate is my secret weapon in driving direct bookings, helping me increase revenue by almost 200%Laura Cherrington, Director of Sales & Marketing, Billesley Manor Hotel & Spa
The brand
Steeped in history, Billesley Manor Hotel & Spa is located on 11 acres of Warwickshire parkland, 5 miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s grade II listed and famous for hosting Sir William Shakespeare in 1599.
Today, Billesley Manor Hotel & Spa is an inspiring retreat where guests receive the highest level of service and personalized touches, which create a sense of calm and escape.
The challenge
Following the pandemic, Laura Cherrington, Director of Sales and Marketing, found that the hotel’s booking window shrunk considerably. Guests were wary about booking hotel stays far in advance and were instead booking within the same week of travel.
This made it hard to predict future capacity, revenue, and occupancy rates. Laura needed a predictable source of direct revenue to ensure she met her goals.
The solution
A Revinate customer since 2018, Billesley Manor Hotel & Spa turned to Revinate Marketing to help drive direct bookings. Leveraging the segmentation filters in Revinate Marketing, Laura filtered by radius to uncover past guests in the drive-to market and added the “safe mode” filter to ensure that only guests with legitimate interest were targeted — this ensures GDPR compliance.
Laura excluded guests with future stays to avoid having to do rate adjustments for guests that booked at a higher rate.
Additionally, Laura created a host of upsell opportunities in Revinate Marketing, ranging from wine to flowers in the room. These offers, which are automatically sent to guests prior to check-in, allow the hotel to increase direct revenue with little effort or staff intervention.
Laura also leverages the OTA winback and “we miss you” automated campaigns in Revinate Marketing to drive past OTA bookers to book direct and encourage repeat business. These campaigns require almost no maintenance once they’re activated, and serve as an always-on revenue channel.
Recognizing the value of the hotel’s guest data in driving direct revenue, Billesley Manor Hotel & Spa leverages the Arrivals Report to see which guests checking in don’t have email addresses associated with their profiles. The Reception Manager is able to ask for the email, so that the hotel can reach out with offers and capture the booking directly next time.
The report also highlights the guests’ stay histories, ensuring that returning guests are warmly greeted and thanked for their loyalty.
The results
With Revinate Marketing, Billesley Manor Hotel & Spa was able to increase direct bookings by 77% from January 2022 to January 2023 and also increase revenue by more than 198%. In the process, Revinate has lessened the hotel’s reliance on OTAs and established a predictable channel of revenue.
“I speak with other hoteliers in my local market and everyone is tasked with driving direct bookings,” Laura says. “I’m thrilled that I have Revinate to help me succeed in my job by making it easy to capture direct revenue.”
About Revinate
Revinate is a direct booking platform that leads the hospitality industry in driving direct revenue and increased profitability.
Our products and our people combine to give hoteliers the superpowers they need to crush their goals. With Revinate, hoteliers shift share away from OTAs and drive tangible results across an individual property or a portfolio. Our industry-leading, AI-powered, customer data platform collects, unifies and, synthesizes data giving hoteliers a foundational advantage.
Hoteliers gain critical intelligence – guest lifetime spend, stay preferences, ancillary revenue, and more. With our Rich Guest Profiles database, hoteliers don't need to guess who their most profitable guests are, or how to drive conversions across email, voice, messaging, and digital channels.
Revinate's direct booking platform and omnichannel communication technology powers 900+ million Rich Guest Profiles across 12,500+ hotels to drive over $17 billion in direct revenue.
Sanjana Chappalli
VP of Brand Marketing and Communications
Revinate, Inc.