5 Luxury Hotels Team with Digital Alchemy to Personalize and Brand Communications that Strengthen Guest Relationships and Revenue
March 10, 2016 – Valencia Group is a truly exceptional hotel company. Each of its five luxury properties is remarkable with its own personality and brand. “All of our hotels are boutique and unique,” said Amy Trench, marketing director for the Valencia Group.” Each property tells guests a story. Digital Alchemy tells that distinctive story with creative guest communications and through social media marketing for hotels.”
Valencia Group owns and operates market-leading hotels including Hotel Valencia Santana Row in San Jose, California, Hotel Valencia Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas, and Lone Star Court in Austin, Texas. Third-party managed properties include Hotel Sorella CITYCENTRE in Houston, Texas, and Hotel Sorella Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri.
“Digital Alchemy understands each property’s strategy, image, and messaging.” "Each property is a remarkable hotel in a unique destination,” said Trench, “It is essential that each hotel communicates its own personality in the message. This strengthens guest loyalty and establishes the hotel’s lifestyle qualities in our guests’ thinking. Digital Alchemy understands our property-specific strategy and messaging. Their team is exceptionally knowledgeable about how to communicate this to guests in emails, promotions, and on our websites and social media pages.”
When guests book a room, Digital Alchemy’s interface with Valencia’s property management system automatically emails an engaging confirmation. Three days before arrival, the system sends a pre-stay ‘Welcome’ email that spotlights local events and highlights the area as a true destination experience as well as the property’s dining and nightlife. “This creates a personalized message that guests value and showcases our hotel’s lifestyle living component.” At checkout, Digital Alchemy sends guests a property-themed ‘Thank You’ email with an eSurvey that delivers valuable feedback to each property. “They are a great marketing partner.”
Guests respond to personalized messaging with their loyalty “Consistency is essential to build guest loyalty and trust,” Trench said. “As an example, Hotel Sorella Country Club Plaza’s dramatic lobby has a contemporary yet modern twist with a blown Venetian glass chandelier in a beautiful royal blue color. This image resonates with our guests as a memorable part of their stay and serves as the identifying graphic for that hotel’s communications.”
Digital Alchemy partners with Valencia Group to communicate special promotions across the brand. “Our Earth Day email messaging served as one of the more successful campaigns resulting in one of the best revenue results in 2015,” Trench said. “The piece promoted the Sustainable Sips being served in each of the hotels’ bars along with the green initiatives taking place at each of the hotel locations. Another successful promotion was our Signature Scent Launch Parties based on our new line of scents capturing the independent style and personality of our collection’s three brands. The invitation to the scent parties was distributed to our loyalty program VVIP’s for a complimentary event that evoked this message, resulting in high open rates of the eblast and successful launch parties in all locations.”
Valencia Group goes a step further to nurture VVIP guest relationships in ways that strengthen guest loyalty and drive repeat business. Digital Alchemy mines the guest history at each property. It then sends branded, personalized email promotions that target each client’s expressed activity or dining interests for specific properties. Trench said, “We find that when we personalize and target our messaging, our guests are more apt to open and respond to our emails. Digital Alchemy tracks each campaign’s success, records the open rate, and attributes revenue to the promotion so we understand what works best.”
Valencia launches iNeed for mobile guest service Once guests arrive at a Valencia property, Digital Alchemy helps ensure they have what they need to make their stay enjoyable. “We recently tested Digital Alchemy’s iNeed mobile concierge system at Hotel Valencia Riverwalk,” said Trench. “iNeed lets guests request anything they want via their mobile device from housekeeping services to requesting their vehicle. iNeed was so successful we will launch the service at all of our hotels this year.”
SocialREV delivers 38% campaign revenue increase to Valencia Group Social media is a large part of Valencia Group’s digital marketing for hotels. Valencia relies on Digital Alchemy’s SocialREV platform and services to communicate each property’s social media campaigns. “Each hotel has its own Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest pages,” said Trench. “Each of our hotels’ director of marketing is responsible for managing those pages and Digital Alchemy’s SocialREV solution helped us move to another level in guest relationships. Today, SocialREV manages our social media marketing for hotels and keeps each property’s brand image consistent. We find that these platforms give guests a voice to post what they are experiencing at our hotels from the dinner they ate in our restaurants to the latest wedding they attended.”
86% increase in new reach with SocialREV Valencia Group realized a 38 percent increase in overall social media campaign revenue using SocialREV in tandem with email marketing. The company also experienced an 86 percent increase in new reach with SocialREV.
Valencia will add three properties in 2016. “Digital Alchemy definitely supports our growth and will continue to be an important part of Valencia Group’s marketing in the future,” concluded Trench. “All of our new properties are in Texas. Digital Alchemy is already mining guest ZIP codes as we prepare to send introductory offers, especially for our VVIP’s.”
