The Situation:
The property recently underwent renovation to increase the room count and was looking to uplevel the hotel to increase brand awareness, drive higher average daily rate and total revenue, and deploy strategic marketing campaigns to reduce reliance on online travel agent sites. The biggest challenges are a national reduction in domestic travel trends, the geographic location of Juneau as an inland island with only air and boat travel into the city, the extreme seasonality of the market, and the limited number of onsite staff.
The Approach:
TDevelop a full commercial strategy program including revenue, marketing, and sales initiatives. Beginning with an audit of all channels and programs and then repositioning the property with new copy and imagery, a new pricing and yield management strategy, and new tactics and processes to streamline the sales process without overburdening operations.
Implementation:
Onboarding took place in the first month with the client, revenue management and marketing cleanup took place in month two and three while a new pricing strategy was deployed. By month four quarterly pricing discussions were happening along with monthly yield management and marketing campaigns were being deployed. Working closely with ownership on weekly and bi0weekly initiatives like paid spend, email marketing, and other activities. Key marketing initiatives included repairs to website structure and SEO, deployment of email campaigns, testing and adopting paid media spend, repositioning copy and imagery across all listings, and collaboration with existing social media team.
Outcomes:
In spite of slower travel in the market and overall occupancy being down about 10% and revenue declines before PenDailey came onboard, after onboarding the ADR growth is up $216 year over year, lifting room revenue at time of reporting to over $140k increase YoY. Repeat traveler visits are up 2% year over year and direct booking contribution through the vanity website is up 7% year over year.