Waterfront Hotel e Business Case Study

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Waterfront Hotele- Business Case Study

• Joshana Davis-Twomey
• Sales Marketing Executive

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Overview of Presentation

• Brief Background on Waterfront Hotel
• Original e-Business strategy
• Designing/Listing our Website
• Tour of Site
• Benefits/Statistics
• Continued on-line Marketing

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Hotel Background

• Built 1998. Apartment-style design
• 64 rooms medium operation
• located on perimeter of Galway City overlooking
  Galway Bay
• Independent hotel

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Aims of e-business strategy

• Drive browser to make enquiry/booking
• Inform and entice consumer
• Cater to primary needs of on-line consumer
  bargains, immediacy, info
• Stand apart from competition
• stimulate higher return from website than other
  similar businesses
• highlight primary selling point view of Galway
  Bay

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Initial Obstacles Goals

• Galway busy/competitive market
• Making a good 1st impression
• Finding target markets
• Leisure travel, tour groups, international guests
• How to advertise outside of Ireland?
• Web easiest and most reasonably priced method of
  advertising to broad customer base all over the
  world

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Developing a Website

• Who we contacted/consulted
• Costs
• Concentrate 70 total spend on marketing, and 30
  on website design
• How long to develop?
• 3-4 wks design
• 3 months for search engine listing

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Guidelines for Website Content

• Good quality photos with quick download time
• Virtual Views (VTRS)
• boost consumer confidence in product
• Specials/Competitions on home page
• immediate demonstration of how consumer can
  benefit
• Forms with quick download time
• keeps customer feeling secure

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www.waterfront.ie

• Concise, appealing homepage
• easy site navigation
• Monthly Special/Competition Entry options readily
  visible
• Rates Accommodation
• Top two customer interests in hotel

Home
Rates
Accommodation
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www.waterfront.ie

• Using Site as source of Tourist Information
• show customer same service they would receive at
  hotel reception
• selling location helps to sell hotel
• Industry links
• Golf Page
• Currency Convertor

Useful Links/Local Activities
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www.waterfront.ie

• Virtual Tours
• Bar reflects hotel quality
• Highlight primary product
• Highlight primary selling point

Kitty OSheas
Bedroom
Penthouse Panorama
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Web Business

• Between 10-15 of total business is web
  generated
• approx. 96 of e-mail enquiries directly from
  website
• Figure has increased consistently since
  establishment of site in November 1999
• slow, steady process 4 month gap between est. of
  site first consumers
• increase proportional to growth in on-line
  ranking/listing

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Tracking Web Business

• Using reservations database (IGS)
• Livestats site
• by nationality
• by referring search engine
• by referring URL
• beneficial in determining which outside sites and
  search engines to get listed with
• Ireland.com example

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Top Referring Search Engines
Top 10 most active referring domains during
period waterfront.ie (51.59 of all referrals)
dir.yahoo.com (10.75 of all referrals)
yahoo.com (5.14 of all referrals) galway.net
(4.91 of all referrals) google.com (4.07 of
all referrals) galwayaccommodation.com (2.80 of
all referrals) ebookireland.com (2.23 of all
referrals) msn.com (2.03 of all referrals)
altavista.com (2.00 of all referrals)
idorla.com (0.96 of all referrals)
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Hotel Guests by Nationality
Website Visitors by Nationality
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Advertising Cost Benefits

• Website as on-line brochure
• visitors already have interest in product
• cost vs. paper brochures
• distribution 4,000-8,000 per month
• Benefits of e-mail shoots
• cost vs. print adverts
• enables immediate customer reply
• directs on-line consumer back to website

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Offline Integration

• Display URL(website address) everywhere the
  company name is displayed (letterheads,
  brochures, rate cards, business cards, print
  advertisements, TV teletext, outgoing e-mails)
• Ensure that staff know and use web address
• Tell people/clients about the website
• Put your URL on promotional items (banners,
  matchbooks, pens)
• Use offline adverts to actively drive people to
  the website, dont hide the URL in small print

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Maintenance of On-Line Exposure

• Site submitted to all top search engines
• Using the right key words, ie.. galway hotel
• Listing with external portals
• Should be more than 5x larger to be worth
  enlisting
• Use trial periods
• Use livestats site to track traffic
• Web Consultants should have software to do
  similar/more extensive tracking

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On-going web marketing

• Establishing mutual links
• GDS on-line booking
• Benefits of international exposure
• Targeted e-mail
• Offers sent monthly to over 1000 customers in
  e-mail database to announce
• Special Rates/Offers
• Upcoming Galway Events/Holidays

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Future of e-strategy

• Possible website overhaul within next few years
• Keeping up with increasing public know-how
• Relationship between increasing public awareness
  of computers their functions, and changes in
  technology which make on-line activity easier and
  quicker
• Continued emphasis on overlap between marketing
  and IT awareness