Beautiful Bedrooms by Fuller’s consists of 32 boutique pubs and historic hotels in the UK. The company that started life as a brewery prides itself on providing traditional, personal hospitality across all properties. In April 2018, Fuller’s joined forces with Triptease to help bring this sense of personalised service to their hotel websites and to drive more direct bookings.
“We were trying to reduce the numbers of commissioned bookings we had through OTA,” says John Edwards, Marketing Executive at Beautiful Bedrooms by Fuller’s. “Trying to entice customers to stay direct was challenging, so Triptease was brought on board to increase the number of bookings we had on our websites.”
Fuller’s warm welcome is at the centre of the brand’s values, so they naturally wanted to offer that same hospitality experience on their website. “We’re trying to display to customers the warmth they get when they walk into one of our pubs. To convey that message online is everything to us!” said John.
For Fuller’s, the partnership started when they added Triptease’s award-winning Price Check tool to their websites. Today, all Fuller’s properties also use the Targeted Messages to deliver personalized targeted messages. They also have access to the Disparity Dungeon and the Insights to monitor their disparities and analyze website and direct booking data.
The Fuller’s team uses the Platform’s data analytics features daily to see what’s going on across all properties in real time. They can then implement this data to promptly create custom messages or personalized campaigns.
John has revealed that his favorite Targeted Messages campaign so far targeted travellers from the USA, who historically converted poorly on their central London hotel’s website. The campaign was a success: in the a very short time it provided a significant uplift in the conversion rate of the target region.
"We have been very impressed by the evolution of the product. Triptease is a forward thinking, fast moving company. Very good partner!”
John Edwards, Marketing Executive
The Fuller’s team also benefits from Tripteases exclusive content and global events, which helps them stay on top of industry news and insights. In June 2018, John attended the Direct Booking Summit in Amsterdam, where he met like-minded hoteliers, heard about their own challenges and learned more about the different stages of their customer booking journey.
“My relationship with the Triptease team is very close, it’s almost like the extension of our own team. We are given guidance and we can challenge each other on what’s working best for our properties and how we deliver our messaging through the Triptease Platform.”
John Edwards, Marketing Executive
From February 2018 to November 2018, Fuller’s personalized messages influenced 957 bookings with an impressive click-to-conversion rate of 13.12%.
The UK-based group works closely with Triptease’s team of Direct Booking Coaches to continuously improve their use of the platform to drive more direct bookings. This deep understanding of the most recently released features and tools has resulted in 21:1 ROI.
“Our plans for 2019 mainly revolve around metasearch and paid search,” John revealed. “Historically, we haven’t played too much in these spheres. We see them as critical for getting more direct bookings, so we will focus on capturing bookers in different stages of this funnel.”
For Fuller’s and any hotels looking to supercharge their metasearch and capitalise on the opportunities presented by the ongoing development of Google Hotel Ads next year, Triptease has launched Triptease Meta. This traffic acquisition product combines two systems, the Guest Value Index and Trip Value Index, to calculate the potential value of a guest and the probability of them converting to make smarter decisions on how to spend in metasearch and beyond.