With people beginning to travel again, Brentwood Suites’ General Manager knew he needed to come up with a COVID-19 recovery strategy to capture traveler demand. Learn what he did to increase reservations to an average of 21 new bookings per day.
Hotel drives bookings with COVID-19 recovery strategy
57 rooms
Independent
VIP Access partner
Their Story
As an independent hotel outside downtown Nashville, Brentwood Suites is a central hub for nightlife enthusiasts, business travelers and Florida-bound road trippers. That all stopped with the COVID-19 pandemic.
In his 18 years as General Manager at Brentwood Suites, Greg Lewis never thought he’d see dozens of hotels close across Nashville — but throughout it all, Brentwood Suites remained opened and fully staffed.
As signs of travel began to return, Greg focused on appealing to travelers. He and his staff tackled everything they could think of, from enhancing cleaning practices to reaching out to their regular guests to book a stay.
He soon realized that while the hotel was getting positive reviews, he needed to increase the property's exposure to capture new bookings.
"Our results so far are huge — our bookings have drastically increased. The additional exposure we've seen from using the Accelerator credits has definitely increased our business significantly."
Greg Lewis
General Manager
Brentwood Suites
The Solution
When Expedia Group launched the Revive and Relief program to help properties with marketing support and financial relief, Greg reviewed the benefits and immediately signed up. As part of the program, he received Accelerator credits, a marketing tool to help increase a property's listing visibility in traveler search results.
Greg's strategy: create multiple Accelerators. He paid attention to traveler trends and started to see more reservations with shorter booking windows. To capture last-minute travelers, Greg created an Accelerator that targeted people who used the Expedia mobile app.
Using Accelerator boosted his listing in the sort rank and helped Brentwood Suites reserve an average of 21 new bookings per day. Greg credits Accelerator with helping capture new bookings and increasing occupancy rate.
"Revive and Relief has helped us tremendously. We're already seeing some definite advantages to our business, thanks to the Accelerator we are running, and we expect to see more as the industry picks up."
The Future
As part of Greg's long-term Accelerator strategy, he added inventory well into 2021 to capture travelers looking to plan future trips. With more inventory loaded, he then set up an Accelerator to ensure the property's listing would appear higher in travelers' searches. Setting the Accelerator now also meant Greg would take advantage of his Revive and Relief Accelerator credits through the end of 2020 while actively rebuilding his business for 2021.
"That's why I went and loaded more inventory and an Accelerator for 2021. I want to make sure I used the full extent of the Revive and Relief program, as far as the Accelerator credits, but also really maximize the results that we can get out of the program," Greg said.
With inventory loaded and multiple Accelerators running, Greg positioned Brentwood Suites to effectively capture the pent-up demand for travel in both the short term and the long term.
