Ocean Sands Hotel is a family-friendly 3-star hotel situated on the Wild Atlantic Way in the picturesque seaside town of Enniscrone in Sligo. The hotel offers bright, comfortable, and spacious bedrooms and has a number of self-catering apartments available for larger groups or longer stays, and guests can choose superb cuisine from either Dunes Dining Room or Ocean Bar & Restaurant when dining onsite.
Rate Wise began working with Ocean Sands Hotel in the Summer of 2018 having been recommended to the Hotel by the Digital Marketing Agency, Sprint Digital. The property was performing well but the team at the hotel were looking for greater insight into maximising their room revenue and were also looking for ways to increase their room sales through their own website.
“We have a small team in the hotel and Rate Wise has allowed us to expand the skill set of our team without the extra cost of a new team member. We have the reassurance that our decisions for our sales strategies are based on solid experience and expertise.” Mark Devaney, Owner
THE START OF THE PROCESS
To begin with we visited the hotel to meet with the team face to face and then followed up with weekly calls to continue familiarising ourselves with the strategies, processes, and systems they had in place. This way we are able to build on the relationship with the hotel and they come to trust us, knowing that the suggestions being made have the hotels bigger picture in mind.
The first big project we did was a review of their own website which helped streamline their packages and their set up, as well as helping to edit and redefine their room types. We then put a plan in place that helped the hotel improve their overall sales and revenue performance through their brand website.
The longer we’ve been working together the more comfortable and confident we’ve all become in the partnership, and team calls now happen once a month between the team in the Hotel, Sprint Digital and Rate Wise. These calls focus on their own website production, but we also review the previous month’s overall performance and look ahead to the following month to ensure we are priced correctly and yielding smartly.
As Rate Wise works so closely with Sprint Digital these meetings are extremely productive and allow tasks to be signed off and implemented straight away with no delays. The result of this means that the property is able to react and yield their rates much quicker and see the benefits sooner.
THE RESULTS
The results of our work with the hotel and Sprint Digital speak for themselves -the hotel’s own website performance 2018 vs 2019 are below. There was a steady increase in revenue, booking value, room nights, and overall bookings in 2019 versus 2018.
Revenue: Increase of 17%
Average Booking Value: Increase of 5.7%
Room Nights: Increase of 2.4%
Bookings: Increase of 13%
