The brand

Sandymount Hotel is the largest and oldest family-run hotel in Dublin. Located in a very competitive market, Sandymount Hotel is blessed with a great location near Aviva Stadium, a beautiful property, loyal staff members that stay for decades and a forward-thinking owner that believes in the power of technology to improve business results.

The challenge

In the summer of 2016, Sandymount Hotel began using Revinate Marketing. Ciara Kelly, a new Marketing Manager at the property, was tasked with developing an automated, revenue-driving email program to replace the manual process they had in place. Ciara explains, “We were doing some email campaigns before Revinate, but it was laborious because we had to export customer lists in Excel and upload them campaign by campaign. Because it was so time-consuming, we weren’t communicating as much as we should have been. On game days at Aviva Stadium, for example, our arriving guests would be frustrated that they weren’t told about road closures, and our reviews would suffer.”

The solution

With Revinate Marketing, Ciara can easily engage with guests. Because Revinate is integrated with the PMS, she has automated all transactional emails, allowing her to effortlessly drive upsell revenue and ensure that her upcoming guests know what to expect on property, especially if there’s a game next door at the stadium.

And, with transactional emails automated, she can focus on special offers and other campaigns. In fact, she credits Revinate with helping the hotel to win ‘Europe’s Leading Green Hotel’ at the World Travel Awards, three years in a row, saying, “The winner is determined by vote so being able to quickly harness the power of our database and get our guests to take action was key to our win. This award drives a lot of revenue as many corporate clients and leisure guests want to stay in hotels with environmentally sound practices. We consider that email campaign a big win.”

The results

For a family-run hospitality business, relationships are everything. John Loughran, the owner, runs the hotel with his son, Gerard, and both are on-site every day, meeting guests and welcoming them to Dublin. With Revinate Marketing, Sandymount Hotel can continue the relationship with the guest, even after the stay, which is why so many return over and over to stay at the hotel when they’re in Dublin.