Case Study

Company profile

Established in 2004, Hotel24Seven is unique in the South West: it has no receptionist or front desk, and is a totally automated hotel. The savings made through this automated system are passed on to the customer – who gets a high quality hotel experience at a budget price. 

The brief

Hotel24Seven approached Noisy Little Monkey as their existing hotel booking system was not fit for purpose.  Hotel staff found the booking management interface tricky to use; prospective guests also found the online version difficult and unreliable. The system frequently crashed during the payment process, driving valuable customers elsewhere. 

In terms of visibility, although it relied on natural search engine listings to promote the business, Hotel24Seven could only be found on Google by typing in the company name.  As a result, online bookings made up less than 5% of the hotel’s occupancy.

Based on this, we were asked to generate more online bookings and provide a more reliable system for staff and customers.

The solution

We spent plenty of time with the team at Hotel24Seven to fully understand the business model and see how and where it was failing, and what needed to be done to fix the problem.  We then suggested the best plan of attack would be to:

• Source and evaluate the leading hotel booking systems
• Integrate the chosen booking system into Hotel24Seven’s business model
• Develop an online marketing strategy to attract the target market
• Design a new website that would ensure visitors had an easy route to purchase.

Sourcing the best booking system

Of the systems researched, we soon concluded that Welcome Anywhere was the best, if not the perfect, fit. It had an online booking system that would easily integrate with Hotel24Seven’s existing payment gateway; the booking process was easy and intuitive and the company had a track record for exceptional support. 

Designing a new website

previously invested more than £10,000 in a website that only contributed to 5% of bookings, understandably Hotel24Seven was unwilling to spend much more money on the website until it was clear that it would provide a substantial return on their investment. Customising a template website kept the design cost low, while allowing us to develop a presence that reflected the business, and more importantly, lead the customer through a simple booking process. Naturally, we built the site using best practice search engine optimisation techniques.

Developing an online marketing strategy

The easy way to advertise hotel rooms online is through established websites such as bookings.com, hotels.com and laterooms.com but it’s not good value for money.  Hotel24Seven was keen to reduce their reliance on these sites, so we developed an online marketing strategy that would lever the full force of search engine optimisation to drive business directly to their website. To help with natural search listings, we used keyword research to identify targeted keywords that were then embedded into the copy and the design of the site.   

We developed a Google AdWords campaign designed to drive highly targeted web visitors (i.e. those who wanted to book rooms in Bristol immediately) to the Hotel24Seven website.  It’s often difficult to target customers who are ready to buy while keeping costs low using Google AdWords, but as Google AdWords Professionals we knew we could drive masses of visitors to the website at a very low cost.

Integrating the new booking system

We provided training and induction on using the system to its maximum potential. To further build the natural search presence we trained Hotel24Seven staff to do in-bound link building.  We also recognised that there was no point paying for unnecessary in-bound clicks and trained the Hotel24Seven manager to turn AdWords off when the hotel was fully booked for the coming fortnight.

The result

www.hotel24seven.com receives vast amounts of visitors from Google through both natural and paid listings and actually achieved the highest possible search engine position in the shortest possible time. The hotel now  has an 85% occupancy rate wholly driven through website bookings.  The increased profit and confidence in bookings meant that Hotel24Seven were able to expand into the next building to provide a further 7 executive hotel rooms.  Which, at the time of writing, are also fully booked.  

Next steps

Since setting up the website and online marketing campaign, Noisy Little Monkey has continued to work with the Hotel24Seven team on a regular basis, monitoring the campaign’s success and tweaking where necessary.   These tweaks have allowed Hotel24Seven to shift the visitor profile so that guests are happy to pay higher room rates, further increasing the profitability of the business.