How pricing solutions helped Q1 Resort and Spa improve its visibility

Whether you’re managing a global hotel chain or running a short-term rental property, your pricing strategy plays an integral role in the success of your business. 

Once your rate plans are in place and your pricing foundation is set, there are a number of pricing solutions designed to help you increase visibility and fill rooms. Understanding market trends is key to determining what solution to implement when, which is why Sophie Hallion, Central Reservations Manager at Q1 Resort and Spa, an independent property located on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia, turned to her Account Manager, Janita Hartwig, to help inform their recovery strategy. 

Identifying opportunities

“I had a number of discussions with Janita while we were in lockdown around our recovery plan and how we could put things into place that would assist with some of the challenges we were having,” says Hallion. “As an independent property, we don’t have access to a huge amount of data and that’s where partnering with Booking.com really helps. With the assistance of Janita, we were able to identify search criteria people were using and adapt accordingly.”

Along with highlighting search data, Janita’s insights helped to identify peak periods and market trends. This ensured Hallion was able to make informed decisions that could help increase occupancy. 

“We looked at a variety of different data points that are visible to the property directly via the extranet,” says Hartwig. “Alongside this, I would recite stats about the market while looking at their different promotions and educating them on what wasn’t working and what solutions could better help instead.” 

Implementing solutions 

From deals and targeted rates to premium programmes, our solutions can help you increase occupancy in different ways depending on your revenue goals. “We talked about a lot of different options,” says Hallion. “One solution we adopted was a country offer. With international business being virtually non-existent for Australia at the moment, we thought it best that we apply a domestic offer to capitalize on the demand that we’re seeing in that space. We applied a 10% offer, which has worked really well."  

Another solution the property already took part in is the Genius programme. Genius partners can select which rooms in their property they want to apply the Genius discount to. These prices can attract valuable guests who, once they are on your listing, may also be converted to other room types that aren’t included in the discount.  

“We reviewed the room types that were included within that programme to ensure we were maximizing the opportunity,” says Hallion. “For our property, some of our Genius members book other rooms types that aren’t Genius rates.” 

Next to exploring opportunities to adopt solutions, reviewing your cancellation policy is key - especially now that flexibility is king. “We decided with Sophie to bring Q1’s cancellation policy down from 14 days to three days,” says Hartwig. “We’re seeing a lot of people booking short term at the moment, within one to three days, and a lot of people are searching via free cancellation.” 

Looking at the results

Since implementing these solutions and reviewing their cancellation policy in June, the property has seen a noticeable boost in performance. Based on its search results score - accessible to partners via the Visibility Dashboard on the extranet - the property was previously sitting at number 21 and moved up to the number one spot in the area. 

“We’ve definitely seen a significant increase in both the number of bookings and also our ranking on the website,” confirms Hallion. “Based on book dates between June 1, 2020 and July 19, 2020, we saw a huge increase in bookings year-over-year (YoY) for June, July and August. The number of bookings we had for that period increased by 90%. Even looking forward to December 31st we see a 60% increase in bookings YoY.”