The brand

Over a year ago, InterContinental Grand Stanford Hong Kong began working with Revinate Marketing. The team was excited about the opportunity to integrate their email marketing with their PMS, Opera, allowing them to easily automate guest communications and drive revenue through upsell offers.

The challenge

Digital marketing manager Nicole Chan knew that driving the best open rates required understanding what communications guests wanted to receive. So she used Revinate Marketing’s Preference Collection feature to find out what offers were most interesting to her past guests. Little did she know that a year later, this data would be used as one of the primary channels to drive booking during the hardest period in the hotel’s history.

In February, 2020, Hong Kong closed its borders to international travelers due to Covid-19. All non-Hong Kong residents arriving by air from any location other than mainland China, Macau, and Taiwan were denied entry. Hong Kong, once a bustling tourist destination with 81,000 rooms, was now lacking international travelers.

The solution

Nicole says, “It’s a hard time for everyone in hospitality, but I’m more thankful than ever that I have Revinate. So much of our marketing program is automated so even with fewer resources we’re able to ensure our guests have a great, consistent experience, from booking, all the way through the stay.”

Nicole also found that the work that she did to collect guest preferences around offers was the ticket to driving direct bookings during Covid-19. She explains, “We are now sending three to four staycation offers every week to highly segmented audiences. Our open rates are double the industry average because I know precisely the offers that our guests want to receive and we make sure that we target the right guests with the right offer. This strategy has enabled us to continue to drive bookings with local guests.”

The results

Furthermore, Nicole uses Revinate Marketing’s upsell feature to drive ancillary revenue before the guests check in by offering dining packages or room upgrades. Since Revinate and Opera are fully integrated, there’s no manual data entry or rekeying, which is important with limited staff.

While there are few silver linings around Covid-19, Nicole is thankful for the partnership with Revinate. She says, “I can’t imagine what this year would have looked like without Revinate. The ability to drive direct local bookings in an automated fashion was our saving grace this year. We couldn’t have done that without Revinate.”