2024 hospitality benchmark report
Email channel – EMEA
Email channel – EMEA
In this chapter you will find
In this chapter you will find
Introduction
Introduction
“You’ve got mail” is now a reference that most people under the age of 30 associate with an old movie — if they’ve heard of it at all — and not the way we used to get excited to log on to our dial-up internet to check for new “electronic mail.”
Now, people crave “inbox zero” as they are bombarded with daily messages from brands. But email is still one of our most-used digital touchstones, and a key way for hoteliers to stay in touch with their guests.
Revenue from email marketing is expected to reach 13.7 billion dollars by 2025. Because it’s such a lucrative and highly-used channel, the competition can be stiff — and hoteliers need to make sure that their email campaigns are up to standard.
It can be difficult to parse what, exactly, those standards are. What is a “good” email open rate? Or survey response rate? Or cancellation recovery conversion rate? Or newsletter click-through rate? We’ve analyzed 1.8 billion emails to help you understand exactly how your hotel email marketing measures up to your peers’. Because when hoteliers master the email channel, they win — and so do guests.
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EMEA email channel benchmarks
EMEA email channel benchmarks
Let’s start at the most fundamental level.
The average performance for any hospitality email campaign in EMEA, irrespective of audience, segmentation, or topic is:
- 36.4% open rate
- 2.9% click-through rate
- 0.4% conversion rate
Less than one percent conversion rate? Yes, really. Consumers receive massive amounts of marketing emails, and usually only interact with a few of them in comparison. Consider this number the bare minimum. There is a lot that you as a hotelier can do to entice more guests to interact with your emails. It comes down to that age-old marketing mantra: send the right person the right message at the right time.
The first step? Narrow down your audience. Who do you want to reach? Guests who stayed at your property in the fall? Guests who previously gave you a 5-star rating? Guests who booked via an OTA? Potential guests who abandoned the booking engine without completing a reservation?
Once you specify your audience, you can craft messaging that will resonate with their specific interests, characteristics, or behaviors and send it at the time when the information will be the most relevant to them. This process of narrowing down your audience is the art of segmentation — and it can multiply your average conversion rates many times over.
The impact of segmentation: Benchmarks for open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and revenue
The impact of segmentation: Benchmarks for open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and revenue
If a perfectly-targeted email is a five-star feast tailored to each guest’s palate, then a Customer Data Platform is the ultimate kitchen, equipped with all the necessary tools and ingredients to whip up a flawless culinary creation. To serve up highly personalized emails, you need rich guest data that is easily segmentable by guest preferences, stay history, geo-location, demographic data, and more.
The more data you collect, the more specific segments you can create by applying multiple segment filters. And the more specific your audience is, the more you can tailor your messaging to their needs and interests. And in turn, the more revenue you can generate.
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Revenue per segment filter
Our data shows that the more segment filters you apply to an audience, the more revenue per recipient you’ll earn — 2.6x more revenue by adding just three filters.
Benchmarks based on send size
The smaller and more targeted your audience, the higher your open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. In fact, the conversion rate in EMEA for segments with under 5,000 recipients is 2x higher than the regional benchmark for any campaign. And it’s significantly higher than emails sent to over 50,000 recipients.
Instead of sending broad, generic emails to large swaths of your database, create multiple highly-targeted campaigns to reach specific audiences with relevant promotions. You’ll capture more direct revenue and build loyalty with your guests.
Campaign performance: Benchmarks for OTA-winback, newsletter, cancellation recovery, and other campaign themes
Campaign performance: Benchmarks for OTA-winback, newsletter, cancellation recovery, and other campaign themes
As with all benchmarks, it’s important to compare “like to like,” so we’ve broken down email performance according to different campaign types, like OTA-winback, we miss you, or room offers. When designing email campaigns, there are two ways to structure them: one-time or recurring.
As the names suggest, these campaigns are defined by how often they are set up and deployed to their target audiences. Recurring campaigns are “set it and forget it.” They are triggered to send when a guest performs a certain action: for example, a cancellation recovery email will automatically be sent after a guest cancels their reservation. They have a predetermined message and segments that apply to each send.
One-time campaigns are all about flexibility. You select the audience segments and craft the message each time. But even though they aren’t “set it and forget it,” they represent important opportunities to engage with your guests — and have big upsides for revenue potential.
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The main recurring campaign types include:
Birthday: Send guests a promotion or special package ahead of their birthdays.
Cancellation recovery: Win back lost bookings by prompting guests to re-book their stay at a later time.
Cart abandonment: If guests leave the booking engine before completing their reservation, send a follow-up email reminding them to complete their booking or offering an incentive.
Double opt-in: These emails aren’t about making bookings — at least not up front. They are designed to secure guests’ permission to receive marketing communications from you and comply with privacy regulations. But guests who double opt-in tend to be very engaged, and we’re able to track revenue from these guests down the line.
OTA-winback: Send OTA bookers an email after they’ve completed their stay to entice them to book direct on their next visit.
Pre-arrival: Get your guests excited for their upcoming stay and share relevant details about their reservation or promote available activities and amenities. These are also a great opportunity for upsells.
Qualification: Set up a custom recurring campaign based on the qualifying event of your choosing. For example, you can use qualification campaigns to trigger emails when a guest achieves a new loyalty tier, or when they submit a form on your website.
Welcome: Automatically send guests a welcome email after they complete their check-in giving them a warm reception and letting them know about special events or amenities.
We miss you: Send past guests a special note when nearing the anniversary of their last stay, reminding them of the special time they had.
Three popular types of one-time campaigns are:
Events and announcements: Planning a holiday soiree at your restaurant? Offering seasonal packages? Let your guests know and invite them to join you.
Newsletter: Send your guests regular updates about goings-on at your hotel and share photos that keep your property top-of-mind for when guests are ready to make their next trip.
Room offers: Trying to fill up last-minute vacancies or round out the season? Use offers and promotions for specific rooms or packages to entice bookers.
Benchmarks for recurring campaigns
Each one of these campaigns is another tool in a hotel marketer’s kit for winning direct revenue and guest engagement. Compare your campaign performance to these benchmarks for open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates for recurring campaigns.
Revenue benchmarks for recurring campaigns
When benchmarking the average value per booking (ABV) and average room nights per booking (RNB), it’s clear just how lucrative these recurring campaigns can be. Qualification email campaigns net the highest ABV in the region at $1,095. Need ideas for your next campaign? Check out our inspirations page with examples of top-performing emails from hoteliers in EMEA and around the world.
Benchmarks for one-time campaigns
Regularly deploying one-time campaigns can help you round out your revenue goals and create even more opportunities to connect with your guests. Performance metrics are lower on average for one-time campaigns, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth the effort. Just look at these benchmarks for room nights booked per campaign and average booking values: Even though newsletters aren’t typically heavy on a sales pitch, they can drive an average of 249 room nights per campaign and an average booking value of $1,303.
Top campaigns by average booking value
All campaign types are important — but some hold a special place in our hearts. Here are the top three revenue-generating email campaigns by average booking value.
Upsells: Benchmarks for utilization, revenue, and categories
Upsells: Benchmarks for utilization, revenue, and categories
Confirmation and pre-arrival emails are an important touchpoint for preparing guests for their visit to your property and for starting their stay off on the right note. They’re also the perfect opportunity to offer your guests an upsell — whether it’s a room with a better view, a dinner special at your restaurant, or champagne for two.
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Upsell utilization
In EMEA, 59% of hoteliers are using upsells with their confirmation or pre-arrival emails, maintaining their use from 2022.
Upsell utilization for regions in EMEA
Our customers in Scandinavia have the highest utilization, at 91%.
Upsell utilization by hotel size
When comparing by hotel size, properties with 101–150 rooms used upsells the most within the region, at 69%. Those with 1-50 rooms decreased their utilization by seven points, from 54% to 47%.
Upsell utilization by hotel class
We see more variation when examining upsell usage according to hotel class. Economy hotels in EMEA had the lowest utilization at 32%, while Upper Midscale hoteliers deployed upsells widely, at 84%. A well-timed upsell is both a chance to bring in more revenue and a chance to delight your guests by showing you understand them. Upsell offers can be personalized according to stay history, preferences, and more. Ignoring upsells is a missed opportunity.
Upsell revenue per booking
Upsell revenue from confirmation emails in EMEA grew by 14.2%, from $73 to $83 per booking. Revenue from pre-arrival emails, meanwhile, grew 18.8%. Since upsells are automated campaigns, these numbers add up fast and create an always-on revenue stream. Revinate customers collectively generated over six million dollars in amenity and upsell sales in 2023.
Upsell revenue per booking by campaign type for regions in EMEA
Overall, hoteliers across different regions in EMEA generated more upsell revenue in 2023 from confirmation and pre-arrival email campaigns compared to 2022. Benelux was the only region that broke the trend with upsell revenues in 2023 dropping to $19 per booking for confirmation email campaigns.
Upsell revenue per booking by campaign type for regions in EMEA continued
Of all the regions in EMEA, Scandinavian hoteliers in our dataset only utilized pre-arrival emails for upsells, and earned $72 per booking on average in 2023.
Upsell category breakdown
What upsells are guests the most interested in? In 2023, we saw over 96,000 unique upsell entries from hoteliers. We parsed all of these upsells into distinct categories:
- Check-in or check-out: Upsells relating to late or early arrivals or departures.
- Food and beverage: A bottle of champagne? Cheese plate? Buffet breakfast? Candle-lit table for two in the dining room? This category is for all food and beverage upsells.
- Activities: Offers for guests at the spa, golf club, or sightseeing opportunities.
- Parking and transportation: Valet parking or airport drop-offs so guests can get to and from your hotel.
- Room amenities: An extra cot, rose petals on the bed, a fridge, or a pet-friendly room — anything guests need to make their rooms just right.
- Special campaigns: Custom packages, like romantic getaways, family fun packages, birthday celebrations, or other special offers a hotelier can dream up to delight their guests.
The results? Food and beverage was the most popular category by a large margin, at 42% of all upsells. The other categories ranged from 10-14% utilization, showing there are lots of opportunities for you to get creative with your upsell offers to guests and give them the perfect stay they’re looking for.
Surveys: Benchmarks for response rates and NPS
Surveys: Benchmarks for response rates and NPS
Surveys are a direct line of communication with your guests, providing insights that can shape and elevate the guest journey. These insights not only help you drive operational improvements, but also foster loyalty, satisfaction, and long-term success.
Physical comment cards left in hotel rooms are long gone. With the right analytics and reporting, email surveys provide you with essential quantitative and qualitative data on the guest experience. We’ll examine benchmarks for survey response rates and Net Promoter Scores to understand how hoteliers are engaging their guests and meeting expectations.
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Survey response rate
Use benchmarks for survey response rates to understand whether your metrics are in line with your peers. If your response rates are much lower than these benchmarks, consider updating your surveys following our recommended best practices.
Survey response rate for regions in EMEA
The average survey response rate in EMEA is 4.4%. The Benelux region has the highest response rate at 8.1%, followed by UKI at 5.5%.
Survey response rate by hotel size in EMEA
When considering hotel size, hotels with 51-100 rooms and 151-200 have the highest response rates, at 5.2% and 5.1% respectively. Smaller properties may help guests feel like their voices are larger.
Survey response rate by hotel class in EMEA
In all other regions, Luxury hotels have had the highest survey response rates, and Economy properties have had the lowest. EMEA bucks this trend, with Economy hotels achieving the highest survey response rates of the region at 8.3% when comparing rates by hotel classes.
Tip: Automatically prompt survey respondents to cross-post their responses as a review to increase your hotel’s review volume and improve your rankings. Check out the reputation management benchmarks of this report to learn more.
Average NPS
“On a scale of 0-to-10, how likely is it that you would recommend this brand to a friend or colleague?”
This is the question that your Net Promoter Score (NPS) boils down to. It measures how satisfied your guests are with their experience by calculating the percentage of promoters (those who respond with a 9 or 10) minus the percentage of detractors (those who respond with a score of 0 to 6). A score above zero means your hotel has more promoters than detractors. A score above 20 is complimentary, a score above 50 is considered excellent, and a score above 80 is par excellence.
Average NPS for regions in EMEA
In EMEA, NPS rose 11.7% in 2023, from 51 to 57. Within the region, DACH hoteliers boast the highest NPS score at 64.
Average NPS by hotel size in EMEA
Despite not gaining any points compared to 2022, hotels with 1-50 rooms maintained an average NPS of 66, the highest score of any hotel size.
Average NPS by hotel class in EMEA
Luxury hotels, characteristically, earned the highest NPS average score of 66 out of all hotel classes. Upper Midscale properties had the lowest average of the region at 48. Learn more about managing your NPS score with our blog post, “Demystifying the Net Promoter Score for Hotels.”
