🛎️ How this hotel's booking conversion rate almost doubled

Welcome to RemoteHotelier #82!

In today’s newsletter:

🧠 7 lessons from a hotel applying AI in-house

🛒 + 1 new acquisition

🔌 + 2 new integrations

🆕 + 2 new product updates

💼 + 6 new jobs in the job board

In early 2024, Dean Culpan, the GM of South Place Hotel, finished a 12-week coding course at 51. The hotel then hired a full-time data analyst and a computer engineer with a master’s in AI, and put AI to work on SEO, booking flows, and targeted marketing.

1. Start with the language your guests speak.

One of their first moves was optimizing their SEO content for the languages of their most frequent visitors.

You could skip this step and trust AI to do it for you, but it paid off for them. According to the article, booking conversion went from about 20% to nearly 40%.

Needless to say, before optimizing your content, you need to know who your target is (i.e. analyze the data).

2. You own your data.

In this case, they hired a full-time data analyst, but depending on your needs, you might not have to hire anyone.

Modern systems already integrate with the main LLMs (hello MCP connectors 🙋‍♂️). And even if yours don’t, you can always export your data and use the LLM of your choice as your data analyst.

3. It doesn’t end with Revenue Management.

Revenue management seems to be the area where AI has the biggest potential today. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only one.

This hotel made a brilliant use of AI in marketing, orchestrated by the hotel staff.

That said, it was probably an idea they’d had for a long time but couldn’t execute for lack of bandwidth, which brings me to my next point.

4. Trial and error.

The article only mentions the highlights, but I’m pretty sure they had to press more than one button before they figured it out.

When you apply technology to a problem, you have to accept some friction before you get a positive outcome. But generally speaking, reasonable goals make that friction manageable.

5. Their best marketing is their team.

And speaking of marketing, their Instagram profile has a carefully curated image that shows their biggest strengths. But you can also see the hotel staff with a subtle comic tone, which isn’t the norm for a five-star hotel:

I’m pretty sure this helps turn lots of guests into fans (and who knows, maybe even turns some of the staff into influencers 😎).

Curating your socials is inexpensive. And a hotel doesn’t need to be everywhere. Maintaining a polished Instagram/LinkedIn image doesn’t cost much, and the return on that investment can be huge.

6. It cascades down.

They started by optimizing SEO for their most frequent nationalities. Then they used AI to tailor their marketing to what guests from each country care about.

A good example is what happened with their German guests. Seems like they prioritize services like mixer taps, food on site, and easy transport. The result of highlighting this to them clearly was that bookings from German guests grew 120% in a year.

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t a sudden realization, and it was more like a “hold on, mixer taps are important for them? We have those! Why don’t we highlight that?” situation.

7. Investing in knowledge is still one of the best investments you can make.

This story started with the GM learning to code. Sure, they had the unfair advantage of being able to afford a software engineer and a data analyst, but I wonder if this project would’ve been successful without the GM championing it.

But not every GM has to learn to code. Maybe you want to curate your hotel’s social media presence, but you don’t know how (or don’t want) to do it yourself.

How about investing in a course for a staff member who’s interested in the subject?

The same goes for other areas: marketing, restaurant management, cocktail making… the possibilities are endless.

PS: If you’re interested, this is Dean’s LinkedIn profile. It seems he doesn’t work at South Place Hotel since last January. I’d imagine his new hotel wanted to go through a digital transformation and needed someone experienced (and why not to say, the probably offered a juicy and deserved bonus too 🙂).

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📍 Next Event: World Travel Market London (3–5 November).

📅 See the full hotel tech event calendar.

💻 Get your PMS comparison spreadsheet.

💸 Get your RMS comparison spreadsheet.

🛒 Duetto acquires FLYR Hospitality: adding a fully automated RMS and a BI tool where hoteliers ask questions in plain language instead of digging through dashboards. [Link]

🔌 Stayntouch integrates with Staklio: so hotels can share bookings, revenue, and monthly settlements with unit owners automatically through a branded owner portal. [Link]

🔌 Otelier and Avalara connect their platforms: so hotel finance teams can automate lodging tax filing and catch wrong tax rates in the PMS. [Link]

🆕 OCI Hospitality rebrands as Oliver Hotels & Resorts: putting owners at the center of its pitch as it manages more than 30 hotels and nearly 5,000 keys across 14 US states. [Link]

🆕 Proper Hotels bets on members clubs: selling locals annual access to fitness, wellness, events, and hotel perks. [Link]

HOTELS

💼 Vice President of Hotel Development | Remote (based in the UK) | Aimbridge Hospitality EMEA.

💼 Senior Manager, Global Property Management Systems | Remote (based in the US) | Marriott International.

💼 National Sales Director, EAME | Remote (based in the UK) | Hyatt.

TECH

💼 Junior Revenue Manager - DACH | Remote (based in Spain) | Smartness.

💼 Sales Director | Remote (based in Spain) | Cendyn.

💼 Customer Success Manager - Spanish | Remote (based in Spain) | Mews.

That’s all for today, thank you for reading. If this was helpful, share it with someone who'd find it useful too:

See you next week!
Jose