The Woodlands House Hotel and Spa is a family run business located in the picturesque and quintessentially Irish village of Adare.
The hotel started more than 40 years ago as a 4 bedroomed Bed and Breakfast and over the years has transformed in to a very successful 89 room award winning 4* Hotel.
It is a family affair, with Matriarch Mary Fitzgerald at the helm and joined by her four children, David, Elaina, Conor and Richard, along with daughter in law Orla - all of whom play a role in the management and development of the resort. The hotel is committed to supplying Irish Produce, offering local ingredients on their menus as well as using ingredients from their own organic garden.
The Woodlands House Hotel and Spa takes pride in its beautiful bedrooms, dining facilities, including a wonderful outdoor dining venue, spa and wedding facilities.
The challenge
Woodlands Hotel came to SHR Group in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic, with the primary ambition to grow their revenue through organic and paid digital channels.
The goals
- Develop a new website that brought the very best of the brand to life
- Build on the existing domestic customer base, and raise awareness in new markets
- Grow both wedding event business and voucher purchases organically and through digital channels
- Develop a digital strategy to maximise revenues and increase awareness of the brand both at home and abroad.
The Solution
- Developed and launched a brand new website and implemented the Allora.ai booking engine in November 2020
- Utilised key allora.ai features such as newsletter sign up functionality to drive guest engagement, event Rates for the wedding segment, and optimised the system to increase guest length of stay and personalisation of the website and booking engine experience.
The Results
- The hotel grew their booked revenue with cancellations reduced by 51% in their first full year 2021 v 2020 and by a further 16% in 2022.
- Google Ad Campaigns gave a return of 64:1 in 2021 and 52:1 in 2022.
- Introduced Microsoft Advertising in 2022, ROI of 29:1
- Google Display and Youtube generated over 1.7M impressions in 2022
"As a family and extended team, we passionately invest in developing our resort and experiences. Changing our website and booking engine afforded us the opportunity to tell our new story and to new markets. SHR Group's team and particularly Tom our account manager went to great lengths to advance our web presence. We are a target-driven organisation and SHR Group's strong reporting, focus on key metrics and continuous innovation have helped drive our traffic and our return on investment to levels beyond our expectations. Continuous growth is important to us and SHR Group are very much on that journey with us."
Elaina Fitzgerald, Director, Woodlands Hotel