The brand

Hotel Wailea is Hawaiʻi’s only Relais & Châteaux property and its sole adults-only luxury hotel. Situated 300 feet above the sea with sweeping views of three Hawaiian islands, this lush, tropical enclave was voted #1 hotel in Hawaiʻi by Travel + Leisure readers in the 2022 and 2023 World’s Best Awards. Seventy-two individually designed suites are set among 15 acres of zen-inspired landscaped grounds, with tropical gardens, cascading waterfalls, and winding pathways.

The challenge

During a time when many hotels struggle with OTA share, Hotel Wailea is in an enviable position: Over 50% of the hotel’s bookings come directly from the website. Partnering with OTAs without losing share is a key priority for the small marketing team. Director of Marketing, Amber Watt, explains, “OTAs provide valuable visibility for our brand via the ‘Billboard Effect,’ but maintaining a 50%+ split is incredibly important to us as we focus on profitable guest booking and ancillary revenue.”

The solution

In October 2018, the Hotel Wailea marketing team began using Revinate Marketing to better understand hotel guests and send emails to them in a more personalized way. With a strong focus throughout the organization on database health, the marketing team can leverage a treasure trove of guest data within Revinate Marketing to aid in developing customized content for different guest types, across all stages of the guest journey.

With Revinate Marketing’s dynamic content features, the marketing team saves significant time personalizing email content by guest segment and rate type. Ensuring that the right person gets the right message at the right time has had additional benefits across the hotel — guests make fewer calls to Guest Services Agents since they have the right content at the right stage of their travel journey. For example, automated pre-arrival emails include the check-in time and the ability to pre-book dining and activities, which not only drives revenue, but also guest satisfaction, since guests can better plan their time on holiday.

The marketing team also leverages Revinate Marketing to drive room bookings with one-time campaigns. A “Celebration Suite” campaign, for example, drove 262 room nights and a 41% open rate, which is a testament to the hotel’s strong data hygiene. Similarly, the hotel’s monthly newsletter (featured right) saw a 38% open rate in January and drove 80 direct room nights.

The results

With Revinate Marketing, Hotel Wailea drives direct room and ancillary revenue and ensures that share doesn’t shift to OTAs. Revinate performance highlights include:

• Reduced customer acquisition cost by 50% and increased repeat guests by 100%
• Average email health: 75%
• Average open rate per campaign: 38%