The brand

Founded by entrepreneur Sheila Johnson, Salamander Collection has a luxury portfolio with many awe-inspiring hotels: the Forbes Triple Five-Star Salamander Middleburg, an equestrian-themed property in the Virginia countryside; Salamander Washington DC, an elegant hotel located along the capital’s vibrant Southwest waterfront; Half Moon, the storied resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica; Aspen Meadows Resort, with its sweeping 40 beautiful acres in Aspen, CO’s west end; Hotel Bennett, a spectacular grand hotel overlooking the city’s historic Marion Square in Charleston, South Carolina; and Innisbrook Resort in the St. Petersburg/Clearwater area, which hosts the PGA TOUR’s Valspar Championship each year on its famed Copperhead Course.

The challenge

The Salamander Collection had plenty of guest data — but it was siloed in different software solutions with different functions across their portfolio. Without a centralized guest database and accessible reporting, teams couldn’t make use of their data to improve the guest experience, drive revenue, or even analyze the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. They sought a comprehensive solution to streamline operations, drive revenue growth, improve reporting, and elevate guest satisfaction across all touchpoints.

In particular, the reservation teams needed a platform to help with agent training, improve productivity, and track success. Alexandra Jonker, Director of Reservations at Salamander Middleburg, explains, “We needed a solution that would let us record and access calls for training to improve quality and a better way to report revenue generated by the reservations department.”

The marketing team also needed a solution for creating personalized email campaigns. Vice President of Marketing, Liz Longo Martin, summarized Salamander Collection’s challenge succinctly, saying, “It felt like you needed a degree from MIT to build a list or an email with our previous email solution. It was old and clunky.”

Their former CRM posed a steep learning curve and lacked essential features that were vital for the team’s operations, including streamlined parent-child account setup, robust segmentation tools, and precise revenue reporting.

The solution

Salamander Collection already used Revinate Guest Feedback and were happy with the service, solution, and innovation. They saw that staying with the Revinate brand would have benefits from a usability and data standpoint. They added Reservation Sales and Revinate Marketing to their tech stack, excited by the prospect of having a single view of guest data to use both on the phones and for marketing campaigns. And with the help of RezForce, Salamander Collection took its call center operations to the next level, allowing RezForce agents to manage overflow and after-hour reservations.

The reservations team is finding much success with Reservation Sales. Agents are experiencing unprecedented productivity, empowered by features that help them efficiently follow up on abandoned bookings, initiate outbound calls to previous visitors, and more. With the solution, the team can easily access guest profiles when on the phone to personalize their conversations or add notes that will be helpful for other teams when the guest is on property.

Lexi Rumley, Reservations Supervisor at Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club, says, “Reservation Sales allows us to set goals for our agents and easily access reports to track their success. Training can then be tailored based on the results.”

Liz explains, “Having that single guest profile is incredibly powerful. Our Reservations team uses it on their calls to ensure they provide a personalized touch. It fuels all our guest engagement. The fact that all systems talk to each other means our data is always clean, up to date, and actionable.” And this data is powerful for both the Reservations team and Marketing team.

When it comes to guest engagement through email marketing, both the corporate office and the individual properties leverage Revinate Marketing. The reservations team uses it to send automated transactional emails, and Corporate Marketing Specialist Annie Heffernan uses the solution for lifecycle campaigns and corporate emails. Thanks to the effortless creation of on-brand templates, every email crafted reflects the distinct personality of each property while resonating with the corporate brand.

Revinate Marketing’s segmentation capabilities power personalized email campaigns. For example, a Family/Spring Break campaign (featured right) was created exclusively for past guests, and cross-promoted the properties.The email had a 39% open rate and drove 969 room nights and $570K in direct room revenue.

Automation features in Revinate Marketing allow Salamander Collection to scale its marketing efforts. “We Miss You” campaigns sent to lapsed guests are effective at getting guests to return. To date, the campaign has driven more than $100K with a 63% open rate and 4% click-through rate. And an automated qualification email for Half Moon Resort’s E-club has driven $225K in direct room revenue, with a 75% open rate and 21% click-through rate.

The results

With Revinate Marketing, the team finally has the easy-to-use marketing platform they longed for. With real-time reporting that’s both easy to access and interpret, Liz ensures email performance reports are shared to drive a continuous improvement and learning culture.

And with Reservation Sales, the reservations team has grown revenue month over month. With reporting now easily accessible, there’s a friendly competition among the agents to exceed goals. Lexi explains, “We have a competitive team and love to do monthly competitions to see who can book the most outbound revenue. With Reservation Sales, agents can see how much outbound revenue they have booked and compare and talk with other agents to see what they may be doing differently to improve.”

Performance highlights include:

• Lifetime room revenue: $45M via the email channel
• Average room revenue: $34K per campaign
• Outbound revenue growth: 270% improvement from March to April 2024