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Quiet Creek Inn: The fastest way to take control over your hotel’s revenue

September 15, 2016 2 min read

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Quiet Creek Inn: The fastest way to take control over your hotel’s revenue

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Case Study:

300% more direct bookings than all OTA bookings, combined!

“We were able to see an amazing increase of direct bookings through our new brand website. Even better than this is to see that that the performance of direct bookings through our own new website GuestCentric’s booking engine is now three times those of all OTAs combined”, said Marc Kassouf, General Manager of Quiet Creek Inn.

Services

  • Website + Booking Engine
  • Mobile and Social Media
  • PMS Integration

Hotel overview

Quiet Creek Inn has been a must-stay destination since its creation in the 1980’s. Sitting along seven secluded acres of Strawberry Creek in the mountain village of Idyllwild, California, (USA), its studios and one-bedroom suite cabins are nestled amongst tall majestic pines, hiking trails and a natural wildlife habitat, with country elegance permeating year-round.

Challenge

The Quiet Creek Inn team was looking to take control of their online strategy. They were running an outdated website that wasn’t creating the buzz the property was looking for. The potential was out there but they just weren’t able to showcase it to their potential guests. It seemed that their limited content control, lack of mobile or responsive design, lengthy booking process and difficulties in managing their distribution was stopping them in their tracks.

Unfortunately, this poor online performance meant that they were also strapped with heft monthly 3rd part commissions.

Process

The first step in this process was to correctly market the brand and hotel experience to their potential guests. This meant developing a new website that would transport the website users to the magical experience of the Southern Californian mountains. This story needed to resonate in such a way that if you’re not into hiking or fresh air, you’d still feel the urge to try it out. The website needed to be a window to the outdoor lifestyle but, even more importantly, it needed to work as a selling tool. Making sure that efficiency was a key element was one of the top priorities of GuestCentric Design team.

The next step was to protect direct reservations by implementing an integrated booking process. This sales funnel is an optimum solution because the website, itself, works as a seamless part of the booking engine, driving the guest and simplifying their options with offers integrated with the content of the page. When you click on a specific offer on the website, the booking engine then shows that specific offer highlighted, compelling guests to book direct.

Last of all, we gave them control over their distribution with an integrated channel manager. This saves them tons of time, every day, because this eliminates countless error-prone, manual updates to the OTA extranets.

“I have been very impressed with the highly sophisticated yet simple-to-use innovations and features of GuestCentric. We’re huge fan & champions of GuestCentric: I call you the Apple of hotel systems.

Results

Over the course of 4 months the results started to emerge:

  • Direct Bookings through hotel’s own website booking engine outperformed all OTAs combined;
  • An ADR growth in the first 2 quarters of +30%;
  • Occupancy went up additional +15%;
  • There was a boost in newsletter subscriptions.

On a special note, the new website helped the Quiet Creek Inn dramatically grow their Wedding and Special Events business.  This helped them create revenue streams which they’ve now leveraged for the acquisition of 2 additional hotel properties.

“I’m more impressed that GuestCentric continually adds features, integrations, and tools for my business. You don’t just sit on your laurels.”, concluded Marc R. Kassouf, General Manager of Quiet Creek Inn.

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