Getting the best hotel content into the sale, efficiently.
Content is king, yes, but it can’t rule efficiently with poor management and distribution systems. Even the best content can fall short of hitting the mark and the sales targets if you’re struggling to get it out where your agents and operators can use it well in an appropriate format. Wetu brings hotel marketing up to speed with an effective system to manage and distribute content.
Summary
ELLERMAN HOUSE, with its incredible setting overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, is Cape Town’s most exclusive boutique hotel. The marketing team here understands the power of visual content and invests heavily in the production of quality content (images, video, etc.) to inspire people to travel and to create a desire in them to stay at Ellerman House. They also understand that their content needs to reflect that the property is worthy of the rates charged to guests.
Problem
Apart from having a website, Ellerman House had no way of getting their great content out to the Trade. The marketing department worked hard at distributing the content in various ways, but they had no effective mechanism with which to distribute rich visual content to the trade. As a result their operators and agents battled to get the right content for their sales and marketing.
The way content was being managed was problematic. It was being stored and worked on in numerous places and only the marketing department knew where what could be found. Each and every content request had to be dealt with individually, with content being distributed in different ways from emails, disks, flashdrives and Dropbox, for example. Recipients of this content in its various formats then still had to edit, manipulate and manage it before they could use it, losing consistency along the way. Whatever those formats were, they tended to exclude the great multi-media like video. All in all, managing content became for Ellerman House and their re-sellers a cumbersome, time-consuming and clumsy process. Despite a lot of hard work going into creating and distributing content, this proved to be a largely ineffective system.
Solution
By ensuring that their best content is always in Wetu, the Ellerman House marketing team and everyone working for or representing the company is guaranteed easy access to the content. Everyone who sells Ellerman House, for that matter, has access to the iBrochure – from the receptionist to their foreign representatives – and the most up-to-date content, 24/7. They’re able to pass it on easily to the trade, meaning marketing is no longer exclusively privy to the latest content. Since content requests no longer needed to be referred to the marketing department, it has saved a huge amount of time for them to spend on other marketing activities. A quick email response with a link to the iBrochure is all that is required, resulting in reduced response times and saving them from duplicating their efforts.
As a sales tool, the iBrochure empowers the trade to get Ellerman House’s awesome content into the sale at all times. It gives Ellerman House better control over how their product is sold with collateral consistency, which is very important to them. Other means of content distribution to the industry are the Content API, Content Widgets and interactive itineraries where operators in Wetu include their iBrochure in building their Digital Itineraries.
Outcome
Ellerman House now has a single hub for their marketing content that can be easily accessed by anyone who sells them. They’re able to distribute their content quickly and effectively to the trade in an immediately usable format. This saves the marketing team a lot of time and money, and allows them to focus on marketing rather than old-fashioned distribution. It also empowers the trade to sell their product more effectively – getting the best quality content available into the sale increases the ROI on producing awesome content.
Conclusion
By using Wetu as their Content Management and Distribution system, Ellerman House has effectively streamlined and simplified their marketing efforts and become far more efficient in the process. They’re able to get their content where it needs to be and they’re doing it easily and relatively quickly. It’s made life easier for everyone involved and it allows the hotel’s amazing content to shine.
