
In 2023, the Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort experienced an 18% revenue increase across all channels over 2022, thanks to the implementation of RevenueStrategy360™ to ensure rate parity, enabling Member Rates Merchandising and Amadeus’ Guest Management System for Full Marketing Automation bundle.
Chuck Schuringa, General Manager, Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort: “I love both the products and the team, who have been very involved and jumped in whenever we can’t figure something out on our own. Support provided by the Amadeus team has been fantastic!”
Setting the Scene
The Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort in Leavenworth, Washington is a property that honors the original p’squosa (Wenatchi) people’s homelands. Sustainability and a focus on protecting the area’s precious natural resources are top of mind at this resort featuring electric vehicle charging stations, energy saving lights and heating, and building materials consisting of reclaimed wood and other recycled products. A portion of every dollar spent at Sleeping Lady supports the Icicle Fund, a non-profit that owns the hotel and supports local organizations aligned with its mission of promoting arts, history, and nature in the area.
The property has been partnering with Amadeus since 2019, and currently subscribes to a full suite of solutions including Web, Reservations, Guest Management System™ (GMS), Digital Media, and RevenueStrategy360.
Challenge
Before 2021, the resort faced rate parity issues, where prices for similar rooms varied across different platforms, including OTAs and third-party channels. The Amadeus sales team noticed a decrease in direct bookings from metasearch and an increase in bookings from OTAs, which did not align with the balance desired.
At the time, Sleeping Lady was only using Amadeus’ Guest Management System for transactional emails and a separate, non-integrated platform for marketing emails, which was resulting in fragmented communication and missed opportunities for personalization and engagement with guests.
Solution
In 2021, Amadeus recommended that the resort offer equal discounts on Web, Meta and OTAs. Using Amadeus’ RevenueStrategy360 solution data from 2021 to 2023, the property optimized rate parity and achieved a more favorable market mix.
Amadeus also suggested the implementation of Member Rates Merchandising (MRM), a new metasearch feature fully integrated with the iHotelier® Booking Engine that allows member-only pricing to be displayed on top metasearch engines and carried over to iHotelier® for a seamless shopping experience. By advertising special rates on major distribution channels, properties can stay competitive and drive more direct bookings. Through Member Rates Merchandising, the resort was able to reduce their overhead commission costs by shifting its focus to agents who selected the resort based on their preferences, rather than solely on pricing.
Finally, Amadeus encouraged the hotel to enhance its guest management capabilities by upgrading to its Full Marketing Automation bundle. This allowed seamless communication with guests, immediate responses to offers, and the ability for the property to make instant changes to promotions based on feedback.
Results
As a result of these solutions, overall performance for all channels but Demand Services (Meta) improved, with the property showing an increase of 18% in revenue in 2023 over the same period in 2022.
Following the activation of Member Rates Merchandising for Demand Services (Meta) in iHotelier, the resort saw a 63% increase in meta bookings in Q4 of 2023 over the same period of 2022, and a 29% increase in direct bookings.
The resort achieved rate parity across channels and saw extraordinary results from using GMS campaigns and the GMS Cart Abandonment feature:
- The resort’s GMS campaigns saw a significant improvement in performance, with 2022 results increasing by over 300% of 2021 performance and continued growth in 2023 with a 12% increase over 2022 performance.
- The resort saw a 68% increase in direct bookings in 2022 over the prior year using the GMS Cart Abandonment feature and leveraged this growth for continued success in 2023.
As a result of using the Full Marketing Automation bundle’s self-service email marketing feature, the property has also grown its email database and seen an increase in both guest engagement and revenue.
To learn more about Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort, go here.
To find out more about Amadeus’ RevenueStrategy360 solution, go here.