ORM Success Story: Fillmore Hospitality

Fillmore Hospitality is a well-known, forward-thinking hotel ownership/management company that takes an unprecedented entrepreneurial approach to managing its hospitality assets. Since its inception two years ago, the organization has taken on ten branded and independent properties in major urban markets including San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, New Orleans, and Sonoma, California. Adding to its current success, Fillmore Hospitality has an additional six properties in development with the Cambria Suites brand, also to be located in top cities coast to coast. Jeff Iavarone, part of Fillmore’s leadership team, says, “Although we’ve only been in business for the past couple of years, our company has successfully driven our portfolio with an aggressive revenue generation model, far exceeding industry norms based on market performance and RevPAR performance.”

One major factor that enabled Fillmore Hospitality’s quick and successful entry into the hospitality industry is the company’s focus on intently listening to guests and utilizing their feedback to improve operationally. From its inception, Fillmore Hospitality relied on Revinate, which, at the time, was a young company starting to make waves in a traditional industry. The company realized then that online reputation management needed to be a key area of their core focus. “Fillmore’s executive leadership is intimate with the resonance and importance of its online reputation. We address our online reputation as a core operational tool every day,” says Jeff. As a result, Fillmore Hospitality properties are leaders of their competitive sets. Most of the properties also rank in the top ten of the TripAdvisor Popularity Index for their markets, which enforces Fillmore’s attention to Revinate’s Online Reputation Management.

The implementation of Revinate early on paid off in a big way when Fillmore Hospitality decided to re-brand one of its properties, now a luxury boutique hotel in San Francisco. David Eisenbraun, General Manager of Pier 2620 (formerly the Hilton Fisherman’s Wharf), says that Revinate service was key for success. “One of the challenges we had going from a brand to an independent property is that we were heavily reliant on what guests were saying about us online.” The hotel opened with a focus on service delivery and response, using Revinate’s Online Reputation Management solution to gauge its progress.

David says Revinate helped him pinpoint necessary changes very quickly. “I love how Revinate breaks review data into categories. It shows you positive and negative trends and shows you where your problems are. It also shows you the weaknesses and opportunities of your competition,” he says. The ability to hone in on specific critiques was key to improving the guest experience at Pier 2620 Hotel. With Revinate’s sentiment analysis technology, David discovered that one of the biggest areas of opportunity concerned food and beverage pricing. As a result of data from Revinate, David evaluated the pricing and made the necessary adjustments. “Our food and beverage feedback has been very positive since changes have been made,” he says.

David also ‘listened’ to Revinate data to make even bigger changes. “We found that we were getting a lot of commentary about our beds that indicated an improvement was needed. Fillmore, being a revenue generation and guest impact hotel company, made the decision to replace all of the hotel’s beds as quickly as possible.” Once again, comments regarding the hotel’s beds are now substantially positive.

Paying close attention to guest feedback has been hugely rewarding for Pier 2620 Hotel. Just after the re-branding in December 2013, the hotel was #165 on the TripAdvisor Popularity Index. Less than eight months later, Pier 2620 Hotel had improved by almost 100 places on the Popularity Index. It now leads its competitive set at #68 as a direct result of operationalizing the guest feedback data it captured with Revinate.

Fillmore has seen a direct correlation to revenue enhancement by listening, adjusting and responding to Revinate’s ongoing data. “Just after the re-branding, our market share for occupancy levels were at 70-80%. Due to our daily analysis using Revinate, our occupancy index is exceeding 100%. As of now, we are able to yield more aggressively thus remarkably impacting our RevPAR,” says David.

Fillmore Hospitality has been so pleased with its results that it decided to expand its relationship with Revinate. Three of its properties recently signed up with Revinate Post-Stay Surveys. With Post-Stay Surveys, properties can capture more guest feedback and submit it to TripAdvisor for publication, which can further improve review scores and ranking on TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index. Jeff states, “Fillmore wants to and continues to be ahead of the curve when it comes to online reputation management as well as real time data regarding Post-Stay Surveys.”

With Revinate, Fillmore Hospitality is consistently dominating its competition by listening to guests to drive bookings and increase revenue. “We’ve seen a direct correlation between market performance and Revinate results,” says Jeff. “Revinate is a key focal point of our success. We are very happy that Revinate is a valued partner of our organization.”