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Coakley & Williams Uses Online Local Event Marketing to Attract Travelers

Savvy Operator Fills Rooms with Travelers Who Google Events, Not Hotels


Atlanta, Georgia – August 21, 2012 – Hotel sales teams are capturing some of the hardest-to-reach—and most profitable—guests thanks to new online marketing strategies and tools. Attracting the attention of travelers who are arriving to attend local events or visit area businesses and attractions has been a major hotel internet marketing challenge.
 
Coakley & Williams recently refined its online sales approach with an effective solution that enables hotels to create targeted landing pages that promote their properties to those attending or visiting events, businesses or attractions within their local markets. These landing pages then direct that web traffic to the properties’ websites and booking engines.
 
“The first thing travelers do when they plan a trip is look for information on their destination. They Google the regional wine festival, softball tournament, or air show – not a hotel name,” explains Mike Parent, vice president of marketing for Coakley & Williams Hotel Management Company. Coakley & Williams manages 25 properties that include Choice, Wyndham, IHG, and Hilton brands as well as independent hotels.
 
‘This kind of exposure absolutely generates reservations’
“We use a hotel SystemsPro online marketing solution called hotel WebSpace to create landing pages targeting regional events, attractions, and corporate meetings. When we build a page correctly, it comes up on the first page of Google. It is easy for our property sales people to create the pages, and travelers often find our property website and hotel WebSpace landing page together. Having several sites in the first page of Google results gives us great credibility with travelers and absolutely generates reservations for our properties.” Learn more about the features and benefits of hotel SystemsPro products here. 
 
Parent said that the new online tactic reinforces other Coakley & Williams strategies that include pay per click ads. “Our properties come up in the paid search and at the top of the organic search,” he says. When a traveler sees several listings in a row, chances are good that he or she will click on one of them.” hotel WebSpace provides 250 landing pages in an annual subscription, which enables Coakley & Williams properties to create and publish a landing page as soon as a local event is announced. “This is one of the most effective tools to drive reservations that I’ve seen,” Parent said.
 
Cloud-based hotel sales software strengthens web marketing
Coakley & Williams also leverages the web to manage property sales. “We use a virtual sales and catering system called hotel SalesPro. It does an excellent job of automating our sales processes and is a requirement at our properties that have sales teams,” said Parent. “When we take over a hotel we begin a systematic sales outreach to local businesses and organizations and set up our accounts, lead tracking, and sales management records in the new sales system as soon as possible.”
 
hotel SystemsPro's cloud-based platform allows Parent to remotely monitor sales performance in real time for all Coakley & Williams properties so he can lend a hand if needed. “hotel SalesPro is cost effective, easy to use, and enables our sales teams to track accounts and sales activities in an orderly way,” Parent said. “I like to see their performance reports regularly. This includes detailed weekly sales calls and prospecting, follow-up, and achievement against sales goals. I monitor what deals closed, lost business, and this year’s booking pace compared to last year. hotel SalesPro gives me all this in a format I can use to help my teams increase business.”
 
Hands-on professional training is ‘invaluable’
To get properties off to a fast start, Coakley & Williams trains new directors of sales on hotel SalesPro, then on hotel WebSpace. “I let hotel SystemsPro do the primary training online. They do a great job and understand property sales and their systems,” says Parent. “Then I come in and show our new sales directors how I like our company’s processes handled. Each year we have a summer webinar sales-system refresher for our 50 sales people. The hands-on professional training is invaluable.”

About Coakley & Williams Hotel Management
Coakley & Williams is a high-performance, third-party hotel management company based outside Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland. In 2011, the company celebrated 50 years of providing exceptional service for their clients, internal customers, and guests. For more information, please go to www.cwhotels.com. 

About hotel SystemsPro
hotel SystemsProhotel SystemsPro is a technology innovator operated by hospitality professionals that helps clients increase sales, reduce operating costs and efficiently manage assets. The company’s suite of high performance, web-based, true enterprise property solutions include extensive reporting capabilities to empower hotel teams to generate revenue via tools that cost-effectively provide a higher quality guest experience.  hotel SystemsPro solutions scale across all properties and any flag. They evolve to assist hotel professionals in meeting their markets’ ever-changing needs.  Whatever the size of the property or its challenges, hotel SystemsPro solutions do the heavy lifting for hotel operators to streamline operations and boost staff productivity and profitability.
 
Products include:
hotel SalesPro - A multi-property, mobile-ready web-based sales and catering system that provides scalable functionality and a wide variety of reporting options that increase sales efficiency for hotel chains and independent properties.
 
hotel ServicePro -  An economical hotel maintenance solution that preserves property asset value and improves guest service.  It automates the communication, scheduling, tracking and reporting of tasks that surround best practices, guest requests, safety requirements, preventive maintenance and equipment management.
 
hotel WebSpace -  An online marketing solution that enables properties to increase their web presence and convert browsers to buyers on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

For more information, please visit www.hotelsystemspro.com.


Contact:
 
hotel SystemsPro
Edie Chandler Lowe      
Senior Vice President
280 Interstate North Circle, Suite 600
Atlanta, GA 30339
Phone: (770) 303-9911 or Toll free: (877) 263-3645
Email:  [email protected]
www.hotelsystemspro.com  
  
Media Contact:
Julie Keyser-Squires, APR
Softscribe Inc.
180 River Springs Drive NW
Atlanta, GA 30328
Phone: (404) 256-5512
Email:  Julie(at)softscribeinc.com
www.softscribeinc.com

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