Marketing Strategies for Short-Term Hotel Revenue

Interim Marketing Plan Drives Rapid Revenue Growth for Owston Hall Hotel

Client: Owston Hall Hotel, Doncaster, South Yorkshire

Hotel Marketing Challenges:

Owston Hall Hotel is a 32-bed independent hotel, restaurant, and wedding venue. It faced significant challenges in 2023 after being newly acquired. The hotel had limited local market presence, low room rates and occupancy, and a small database. Owston Hall needed a rapid revenue boost.

Historically, the hotel operated primarily as a golf club. It required repositioning, brand building and visibility establishing in the short break and conference segments.

A planned major refurbishment added urgency to the need for revenue turnover.

Hotel Marketing Objectives: 

1. Develop and implement an interim hotel marketing plan to drive short-term revenue growth;
2. Establish a stronger market presence in advance of the hotel’s refurbishment and relaunch.

Hotel Marketing Strategy:

 A two-days-per-week engagement over nine months focused on quick wins combined with a robust marketing plan. The strategy encompassed these key areas:

• Short-term Marketing Planning: Created a marketing plan and prioritised key activities where impact would be felt quickly. Including promotions, website completion, OTA and 3rd party listings.
• Reputation Management: Addressed and improved the hotel’s online reputation on key review platforms like Google Reviews and TripAdvisor. Responded to all Google and TripAdvisor reviews to add a human personality; set up Google Review collection.
• Brand Development: Created a cohesive hotel brand image and strengthened sales materials. This included designing in-house collateral and ensuring consistent branding across all platforms. Newsletter templates, improved wedding pack content, designing menus, room service materials etc.
• Visual Asset Creation: Organised a professional photoshoot to build a high-quality photo library showcasing the hotel’s amenities and ambiance. Updated the brand image across multiple hotel 3rd party sales platforms.
• Hotel Website Development: Collaborated with a development team to build a new WordPress website. Wrote SEO-optimised content for organic search visibility. Starting form zero, achieved page one listings for key phrases including ‘Conference hotel Doncaster’ and ‘Wedding venue Doncaster’. Set up and managed the Google Business Listing.
• OTA Optimisation: Unified and enhanced the hotel’s brand presence on online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia and Booking.com.
• Hotel Special Offers and Promotions: Worked with the general manager to develop targeted/seasonal special offers for dining and overnight stays. Promoted an afternoon tea offer to attract locals to the hotel, to increase awareness and collect data to cross-promote services. Achieved over 250 afternoon tea bookings.
• Hotel Database Marketing: Developed, segmented and grew the hotel’s database. Implemented email marketing campaigns using Mailchimp to communicate with past and potential guests. Grew the leisure database by 150% through a social media competition and website sign-up forms.
• Wedding Venue Marketing: Positioned the hotel as a small and exclusive use wedding venue. Wedding blogs,  improved wedding imagery, wedding offers, ticketed wedding events. Established partnerships with prominent wedding suppliers, Hitched, Bridebook,
• Corporate and Conference Market Expansion: Increased brand visibility in the conference and corporate markets. Improved listings with conference booking agents (Venuedirectory.com), team building agencies and film location agencies. Facilitated online conference and meeting bookings (Meetingsbooker.com).
• Social Media Marketing: Established a social media presence and rapidly grew followers through engaging content and targeted social media competitions. Created a personality for the hotel through stories about the team, house history, food and weddings.
• Revenue Management Systems: Implemented revenue management systems to increase RevPAR and in-house spend. Including Journey gift vouchers, online booking module meetingsbooker, and a wedding show-round booking widget.

Conclusion:

Owston Hall Hotel implemented a multi-faceted, interim marketing plan. This strategy achieved significant revenue growth. It contributed to brand building in a short timeframe and positioned the hotel for a strong relaunch following its planned refurbishment. The groundwork laid during this period created a solid platform for future marketing efforts and long-term success.