What were the biggest problems you were facing before you heard of Myhotelshop?
We are an independent hotel, restaurant and meeting venue with a focus on high levels of service and offering a personal local touch. This of course is a labour intensive and time-consuming. Our biggest problems with regards to driving bookings online were : not enough time to manage our Google PPC campaign as well as we would have liked ; not being able to keep up with the rapid changes that are taking place (literally daily) in the digital marketing world ; tracking our performance and rate of return on investment ; getting and keeping visibility on meta search engines like Trivago ; fighting Booking.com and the other OTAs to get more direct bookings and lower are commission payments
How did Myhotelshop help you assist you on working on those problems?
I had my doubts about what Myhotelshop (or any other partner) could help us with but the responses I got to initial enquiries were prompt and focussed on what we needed. I didn’t need convincing of the value of what online digital marketing could provide but I was reassured that my direct business would grow with very little in the way of upfront costs. The mainly commission based model Myhotelshop offered based on increasing our revenue seemed ideal and the fact that I could pick and choose the aspects they would manage was a plus. The clincher for me was that they integrate well with Stardekk/Cubilis, so I got the best of both worlds – easy incresase in direct revenue controlled through my existing website and channel manager
What do you experience to be Myhotelshop's added value in terms of driving direct business?
Our experience after 6 months has been almost entirely positive. Very concretely in figures our own website’s online bookings started to exceed Booking.com’s contributions within 3 months (with no loss in revenue through the OTA), so it has just been pure revenue growth. The growth is now running at 90% pa. Conversion rate is some 20% higher. The Bounce rate from our targeted PPC campaign is down several % points. We are spending more on PPC but the ROI is around x8 and the PPC is really well focussed rather than on more generic search terms. The other added value is that bookings coming in direct through our booking engine means that our reservations staff can devote themselves to corporate group bookings, rather than dealing with individuals by ‘phone/email or through 3rd party channels. We control our bookings !
Plus I don’t have to worry about our PPC campaigns but I can still see all of the figures, control the budget and returns
How does Cubilis helps you get the most out of your partnership with Myhotelshop?
On speaking with Cublis/Stardekk about how we could progress they told me to speak to a couple of their partners. The integration between Cubilis, our website and Myhotelshop is simple and flawless. Technology that actually works, now there’s a first. Before we just tried to fill our hotel, now we target much more precisely revenue on peak dates and in our specific room types, so not only has our overall revenue increased but we are taking more money for our upgraded rooms
How did you experience the Cooperation between Cubilis, Myhotelshop and Your establishment?
The experience with our 2 partners has been faultless. I have nothing but positive words to say about the integration of all apsects
How would you evaluate the services rendered by Myhotelshop?
I am very happy we took the decision to ‘let someone else’ do the fiddly and time consuming work and would recommend Myhotelshop to anyone looking to take back control of their online marketing, increase their revenue and ROI, as well as integrate new product into existing systems, all without huge up front investment
