A Brisbane City hotel decided to use technology to solve an old problem known to many hotels. Read on to see how this hotel reduced its no-show rate by communicating with guests.

ISSUE

The Holiday Inn Brisbane is a 191-room hotel in the middle of Brisbane’s legal District. Part of the Transit Centre Complex, its mid-week business is mostly corporate and enjoys Brisbane’s buoyant market conditions. That’s good, however for this successful hotel it turned an everyday problem into a critical situation: Managing No-shows.

No-shows upset all hotels: They cause both lost revenues and upset clients. Guests might be relocated during the day in anticipation of 100% occupancy and credit cards are charged with no-show fees, which in most cases considerably reduces the chance of a guest booking the hotel again for their next stay! At occupancies consistently in the high 90’s, no-shows have become a major issue for the hotel. So what can a hotel do to avoid them? There are two obvious measures; however neither of them is a panacea.

Contact all guests to re-confirm bookings, which historically has been time-consuming, expensive and inconsistent; or take credit card guarantees and charge the non-arrivals, which more than likely will result in upset guests, jeopardising the chances of them returning in the future.

APPROACH

The hotel decided to be proactive; deciding that reconfirming bookings is the most service-friendly approach, so started looking at alternative ways to avoid the high labour cost. That’s when hotel general manager Raymond Faulkner decided to deploy Optii Messenger on recommendation from IHG’s regional office. “For a solution to work for us, it had to remove the human involvement. We also found SMS more appropriate for our purposes – it makes sure that we reach even those travellers that are in transit.”

Enabling guests to respond to SMS Messages is a unique feature of Optii Messenger. “Guests simply reply with ‘CXL’ in the SMS, which is easy and quick for them, whilst giving us the speed of response to effectively manage our inventory. Optii Messenger notifies our reservations guys straightaway.”, adds Barry Davies, the hotel’s revenue manager. 

“For our staff, the software solution is so easy to use; we had the main messages set up during the training and within 90 minutes of the installation the first SMS were going out and responses received. Since then, we barely touched it – it just keeps on working!”.

RESULT

The hotel’s reservation staff found that simply reminding guests of a booking set off a regular flow of cancellations from guests who would have otherwise simply no-showed. Consequently, the hotel has reduced its daily no-show rate by 40 percent and the task of managing inventory and yield gained further accuracy. Mission accomplished. 

But the SMS sent by guests was accompanied with an unexpected surprise – guests responded not only with cancellations, but started sending through their arrival times or simply said that they are looking forward to their stay – Optii Messenger started building a relationship with the guest before they set foot through the door! “Mission accomplished” (Barry Davies, HIBne)

Barry admits that the hotel under-utilises the product. “It solved our problem, which is a great relief for us and well worth the investment at a cost of less than two room nights per month. We are now looking towards maximising the capabilities of Messenger by setting up confirmations and upselling messages to use Optii Messenger as a profit driver as well!”