Case Study

How Future Inns Hotels Attracted Last-Minute Direct Bookings With Flexible Offers

Cristiana Vlaiconi

Hotelchamp · אוֹקְטוֹבֶּר 06, 2023

Flexibility has been a hot topic for the travel industry since the pandemic. We helped Future Inns Hotels communicate their highly flexible offer, generating an 8.3% conversion rate for their campaign.

Why it matters: Flexibility has been a hot topic for the travel industry since the pandemic. Hoteliers have started offering flexibility for guests anxious to miss out on their travels. Though the travel industry has been steadily recovering since 2020, flexibility remains one of the biggest travel trends of 2022 with 87% of travellers still valuing travel flexibility. The transition from the peak travel season also did not seem to dampen travellers’ desire to travel—76% of hybrid or fully remote workers said they are planning a trip for autumn and almost 25% of all travellers expected to book a last-minute trip. And as spontaneity increases for autumn, so does the need for booking flexibility.

Future Inns Hotels used Hotelchamp Convert to communicate their highly flexible offer across 3 of their properties.

Top 3 Core Objectives: Aware of trending topics for the future of hotel eCommerce and wanting to cater for changing guest behaviour and last-minute travels, Future Inns Hotels were looking for a way to communicate in detail their flexible offer and encourage guests to book direct.

Communicate offer comprehensively: Flexibility is a topic that is here to stay, so Future Inns Hotels needed to show guests that they can cater for their needs and wants by offering booking flexibility and effectively communicating it to encourage direct bookings.
Ease booking concerns: Guests feel more anxious about booking after the pandemic, so Future Inns Hotels had to ensure their website answers guests’ questions, leaving no room for confusion.
Target UK domestic travellers: With properties in Bristol, Cardiff and Plymouth, the flexible offer had to attract the spontaneous, last-minute domestic travellers predicted for the autumn 2022 season.

"Although the website message had been live for over a year, it still continues to bring in great results and high conversion rates. Because of that, we still keep it live on the website on all of our properties and are happy to continue to reap the benefits over a year later."

Hayley Colley

Head of Revenue Development

👍 Head of Revenue Development Hayley Colley said that Hotelchamp Convert continues to yield great results over long periods of time and maintains high conversion rates on our website.:

"Although the website message had been live for over a year, it still continues to bring in great results and high conversion rates. Because of that, we still keep it live on the website on all of our properties and are happy to continue to reap the benefits over a year later."

⚖️ The selection process: During their research process, Hayley Colley evaluated Hotelchamp's product differentiators, customer support, and holistic value as a strategic partner and ultimately decided that Hotelchamp was the best fit solution:

Head of Revenue Development Hayley Colley said, about their decision: "We chose Hotelchamp because of the proactive team and the intelligent solution. The team comes up with ideas for new website interactions that we can build and hosts regular workshops making suggestions for campaigns. Their tool is easy to use, and creating and updating website interactions is fast and effortless."

📈 The results: Future Inns Hotels communicated their flexible offer to guests needing increased flexibility as a result of the pandemic and attracted guests booking domestic and last-minute trips, gaining the trust of those searching for more security when booking their trips.

Over the three autumn months, this offer was seen over 16,000 times across all 3 Future Inns Hotels properties.
Acting as proof of the changing guest preference towards more flexible stays, the campaign resulted in a very high click-through rate of over 12.5%.
The campaign also proved to be a great incentive to book direct for website visitors—out of all the visitors clicking the message, nearly 8.3% were converted into paying guests.