En español, en français, em português.
Bahia Principe Hotels & Resorts, hotel chain belonging to Grupo Piñero with 24 hotels in the Caribbean and Spain, aware of the changes in the market and in the consumer, is committed to an orderly and efficient distribution that allows the growth of direct sales. This means working with selected partners that offer real added value, while always maintaining a competitive direct price.
The challenge
Bahia Principe Hotels & Resorts originated as a tour operator, where direct sales played a secondary role. In order to change this culture and the associated dynamics, it engaged Mirai Consulting to diagnose the situation, propose the necessary changes and support the transformation:
- Improving price competitiveness vs. online distributors
- Increasing Google Hotel Ads performance
- Optimizing and increasing direct sales
The strategy
One of the most important aspects of direct sales is price competitiveness in relation to the alternative channels through which Bahia Principe’s product is marketed. This is particularly important on hotel comparison sites (metasearch engines), as it is visible to the end customer at key moments in the decision-making process.
Google Hotel Ads is the main display of prices for Bahia Principe in the most important markets. With this data, it is possible to analyze how many times their hotels are displayed in the Google ecosystem and how they are priced in relation to other distributors of their product. On a weekly basis, Mirai downloads this data, loads it into Power BI and generates a report that allows us to understand the global situation and that of each hotel, in each market and for each booking date or stay. As a result, we build a key KPI: %Lose, which is the percentage of times the hotel has a worse price than another relevant distributor.
The result
This is the evolution since Mirai started working with Bahia Principe:
The improvement in price competitiveness was achieved after several phases of work:
- The first phase consisted of streamlining distribution channels to focus on those that add value.
- The second focused on optimizing direct sales, analyzing the competitiveness of its prices in different scenarios (hotel, markets, dates, etc.) and adjusting where necessary.
- The third and final phase was to identify and document the most relevant cases in order to take action with the distribution channels involved.
Specifically, it has been achieved:
- A %Lose less than 10%
- Impression share close to 95%
- Double digit growth in direct sales, achieving record levels
Pablo Sánchez, Mirai Consulting Director, highlights the importance of being competitive in the direct channel as one of the commercial pillars: “You can have the best website, the best engine and spend millions on digital marketing, but if you’re not competitive, the bookings will end up being taken by someone else.”
According to Lluisa Salord, SVP Global Sales, Contracting & Distribution at Bahia Principe: “We’re very happy with the results of our collaboration with Mirai. We have worked as a team from the very beginning. Their commitment, vision and experience have made it a very interesting and satisfying process and we have been able to align the whole organisation towards the same goal.”
Conclusion
Bahia Principe Hotels & Resorts has gone from a level of competitiveness that could be improved to a very good level, a benchmark in the sector, allowing it to enjoy a better performance of its metasearch campaigns and achieve more bookings at a more efficient cost.
