TOWN & COUNTRY STOWE

A tight labor market required increased operational efficiency

Edwin Bitter, General Partner and Asset Manager at Town & Country Stowe, faced firsthand the challenges of the post-covid labor market in finding qualified staff. His team was running their own search engine optimization (SEO) and Google Adwords strategy but needed to hire an in-house marketer or outsource the work to take their marketing efforts to the next level.

Edwin also wanted to implement self-service options for guests to check in, check out, and communicate with staff through text to keep the team lean and increase convenience for guests.

With the right tools and technology, Edwin knew they could operate efficiently without additional staff and decided to partner with Cloudbeds due to their fully managed digital marketing solution ‘Cloudbeds Amplify’ and guest engagement solution ‘Whistle for Cloudbeds.’

Outsourced marketing & low touch operations 

When Edwin first heard about Cloudbeds Amplify, he was immediately on board. He says, “anything that enabled us to have less staff on our end was something I wanted to have in place as soon as possible.” Getting set up was straightforward with the help of Cloudbeds’ digital marketing experts; he says that “it was a pretty low lift on our end – we were up and running within a week.”

Edwin says that before Cloudbeds Amplify, “it was difficult to measure performance since our systems weren’t talking to each other.” Since Cloudbeds Amplify is integrated with Cloudbeds’ property management system (PMS), Edwin can now easily log into a comprehensive dashboard to view marketing performance metrics. 

Before Cloudbeds Amplify it was difficult to measure performance since our systems weren’t talking to each other.

With Whistle for Cloudbeds, Town & Country Stowe was able to completely automate its check-in and check-out process using digital keys and automated guest messaging. This tool has allowed them to further streamline operations and function leanly as they no longer needed staff to manage the front desk.

Running at full capacity with a lean team

With Cloudbeds to support their team, Edwin says, “Town & Country Stowe is probably one of the lowest operationally leveraged hotels in the country, with 4 staff including housekeeping.”

After just 3 months of using Cloudbeds Amplify, Town & Country Stowe has already seen a 14X return on investment (ROI) with a significant uptick in reservations month over month. The use of digital marketing practices has helped expand their distribution strategy to include more direct channels, which led to an overall increase in bookings of 23%.

With increased direct bookings, Town & Country Stowe owns more of its guest data, allowing them to leverage Whistle for Cloudbeds to conduct guest messaging pre- and post-stay. Guests don’t have to worry about waiting around to check in; instead, they receive a key code and instructions on how to access their room the day of arrival, letting them completely bypass the front desk. Online reviews from guests call out the convenience of Town & Country Stowe’s digital options as a significant perk of staying at this motel.

Over the next 6 months, Edwin says they will focus on activating a customer relationship marketing (CRM) plan to send out follow-up surveys post-stay and encourage more guests to book direct.