Two Roads Hospitality had just secured the management contract on a stunning, brand new resort in Cabo San Lucas that opened its doors the prior summer. The Cape is a Thompson hotel that sits on the Sea of Cortez overlooking El Arco. Its location is pretty near perfection, and so are its accommodations, service, dining and spa experiences. (Readers are invited to drool over property photos below.) In fact, the hotel was winning awards left and right not only from all the major travel publications, but from those who read and vote for hotels in these pubs and other travel websites, too. The team at The Cape goes out of their way to make their guests happy….of course, the complimentary bottle of local tequila on arrival doesn’t hurt, either.
Despite all of this high praise, the property was sitting $1mil behind forecast for Q4 as of the middle of September. And the TRH team was not only looking to hit the property’s room revenue numbers for the quarter, but also needed to get group base on the books for the year, and they had to put together and promote the best New Year’s Eve party Cabo has ever seen. So two weeks before the start of Q4, we got a call to be part of a corporate task force team to help out.
Which meant ramp up had to happen at lightning speed. We got crash courses in learning new tools, new people, new resources, and new reporting. We flew down to the property to meet the team we’d be working with, learn the property’s opportunities and challenges, their comp set, their domestic and international feeder markets, and quickly audited the current marketing effort and developed an enhanced marketing plan to hit our goals, which we’ve been executing along with the onsite Marketing Manager and corporate marketing team since September. A few of the initiatives we put into place included:
- Reviewing PMS, CRM and business intelligence tools to get an understanding of who the property’s Q4 guest was to not only develop initiatives to invite them back, but to build a look-alike audience for targeting
- Developing and executing integrated leisure campaigns and messaging in both Spanish and English for the different audiences for Q4 stays
- Building out the Happenings section of the website to include more details of all Q4 holidays and events and providing the opportunity for people to reserve online
- Developing digital campaigns directed toward the local Mexico market to drive awareness of the NYE event and other F&B and nightlife events throughout the quarter
- Working with the PR agencies in the US and Mexico to 1. Promote the villa accommodation product to drive a higher ADR as well as 2. secure the appropriate media and social media influencers to attend and write/post about the New Year’s Eve event and pre-event coverage
- Developing campaigns for consortia and providing materials for the leisure sales manager’s use
- Developing group offers that would take the property into the following year to get base on the books, knowing that over 7,000 more luxury accommodations are slated to open in Cabo by the end of the year
- Developing fun creative to promote NYE party guests’ use of the hashtag #thecapehotel, per the owner’s request
As of December 31, we’d exceeded forecast by +$250,000 and we were at capacity for NYE reservations on the books. The PR team had secured stellar on-brand media outlets and social media mavens to attend the New Year’s Eve event for pre- and post-event coverage, and the property was setting up well heading into high season.
