How this luxury Bed & Breakfast increased bookings by 14%
In late 2009 Kotare Lodge seemed to be in somewhat of a slump. Bookings were sporadic and were in danger of drying up completely. That year they were even empty on one of the busiest weekends on the hospitality calendar: Labour Day weekend.
Kotare Lodge were without a way of measuring their existing website visitors and had no system for storing the details of the few guests who did stay with them.
After meeting the owners to discuss the issues, the goals for the new website were to:
- better align themselves with visitors to nearby Matakana
- showcase and seduce visitors with the amazing views from the property
- improve organic Search Engine rankings
- generate more bookings through online enquiries
- capture customer details for special offers during winter
Brighter delivered a website that met these needs and exceeded expectations.
New customers minutes after going live
16 minutes after the new site was live Kotare Lodge’s first enquiry came through. Spam was suspected but it turned out to be an actual genuine booking! Customer enquiries continued to increase until within a few short weeks enquiries averaged 1 every two days. Enquiries ramped up further as the holiday season approached until the owners even had to turn down bookings for a bit of peace and quiet for themselves!
No enquiries lost, all details captured
Every prospective customers details were captured into the new database saving time previously taken fiddling with details in address books and emails. The database proved a great resource for tempting back guests who had stayed already and the owners were able to identify just those guest from New Zealand and offer winter specials as a way of increasing winter occupancy.
From nowhere to page 1
Using our 25 step process of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) we "supercharged" the Kotare Lodge website focusing on several key phrases related to the popular nearby destination of Matakana. In January 2010 (4 weeks after launch) the Google search results were:
Page 1 No. 3 ranking for search term "accommodation near matakana" out of 30,600 results.
Page 2 ranking for search term "b and b matakana" out of 9,290 results.