A few months ago the hotel was half empty and their marketing was not working…

After major investment to establish the hotel, Management at The Holiday Inn Express in Folkestone realised their marketing initiatives were not yielding satisfactory results with occupancy rates languishing at 20 to 30% of capacity, and only occasional conference bookings.

Holiday Inn Express is part of the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) who provide a centrally managed website. The hotel’s management team needed a marketing solution tailored to the local market to harness the power of the search engines to generate more enquiries.  They also needed a system that enabled them to stay in regular communication with clients to encourage them to return next time they are in the area.

A chance meeting with IRUN at a local Chamber of Commerce started a chain of events that solved the problem…

The hotel now enjoys nearly 100% occupancy and conference facilities are frequently at capacity

Holiday Inn Express is part of the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) and although IHG provides a corporate centralised web setup, the hotel’s management realised they needed to supplement this with their own online marketing tool giving them local control so they could maximise online leverage for specific local marketing initiatives.

How did they do it?

A ‘joined up’ marketing system

Holiday Inn Express, Folkestone did not just need a website or a bit of a push with some search engine marketing, the business needed a joined up system to attract potential visitors, capture their contact details and a system to stay in regular communication to encourage repeat visits and word of mouth referrals. This is how they did it:

• An effective website, with compelling copy (the words), appealing to the eye and easy to navigate and full of relevant information in various formats including an innovative online brochure.
  o RESULT – More names and addresses and more importantly, more online bookings…
• An intuitive online booking system to allow customers to book directly on the hotels website rather than having to go via expensive third party directory websites such as late rooms.
  o RESULT – Lower costs, i.e. no need to pay Late Rooms a booking fee and less time taken by staff dealing with bookings made over the phone
• A powerful yet easy to use customer relationship management and email communications engine to efficiently communicate with customers past and present as well as with prospective visitors yet to book in.
  o RESULT – Increased repeated visits and more word of mouth referrals
• Selective fine tuned and targeted Pay Per Click Marketing on the Search Engines to test and refine the effectiveness of the website and guide the choice of organic optimisation strategies.
  o RESULT – Instant results and a totally controllable and measurable way to grow
• Search Engine Marketing – Once management knew exactly which words and phrases potential customers use when searching they were able to agree a strategy with IRUN to work up to page one. This process is ongoing.
  o RESULT – More visitors found the website and started to read…

Results – From near disaster to total success in less than 6 months!

Was it all down to great marketing? No of course not! The staff and management of the hotel are the heroes. No amount of marketing can turn around a ‘bad business’, but a business which combines excellent customer service and professional staff plus an effective marketing system the combination is guaranteed to deliver success.

• Payback on the original investment in a little over 1 month
• 8 times return on investment within 6 months.
• Hotel occupancy currently running at between 80-100% of capacity ( a 300-500% increase
• Holiday Inn Express Folkestone now dominates page 1 of Google for many relevant local search terms.

An outstanding success – the increased sales and profits are way ahead of the costs of both the original investment and much more importantly the cost of the ongoing work to continually ‘optimise’ the whole marketing system.