Building Community ‘From the Ground Up’
Among the first projects of Innisfree Hotels’ corporate social responsibility program, The Hive, is a sustainable community garden in the heart of a disadvantaged Pensacola neighborhood.
Pre-Opening Campaign, Holiday Inn Resort, Fort Walton Beach, FL
In May 2014, we had a new beachfront hotel to promote. And we thought, “How do we get people as excited about this as we are?” So we asked them what they wanted to bring to the beach. (Are you packing your bags yet?)
When Innisfree Hotels opened the doors of the brand new Holiday Inn Resort in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., it had already broken brand records – hitting $1.958 million in pre-opening revenue.
To reach those numbers, the in-house marketing team worked 18 months in advance, launching a branded multi-channel campaign on our resort website, social media platforms, digital ads and e-mail. Before our page went live, we devised a social content strategy and targeted e-mail campaigns to attract quality traffic to the website. We established Facebook, Twitter and Instagram profiles for the property, with Facebook as our primary social channel.
Our vibrant, multi-faceted content strategy included sharing custom beach content, posting construction updates and partnering with local Chambers and Destination Marketing Agencies. Yet the greatest key to the campaign’s success was our Facebook contest, ‘Show Us Your Beach Love.’
Building pre-opening excitement, we encouraged our followers to share photos of what they would bring to the beach, then tracked their submissions using a contest management platform and custom hashtag. Tagged photos were displayed in a Woobox gallery, where participants’ friends could vote for their favorites.
In support of our content strategy, we purchased Facebook ads promoting the contest and pre-opening deals, strategically targeting women 25 and older in key feeder markets. We then retargeted website visitors and users who entered the contest via e-mail with Facebook and Google Search ads.
Contest entrants signed up for our e-mail list and received weekly communications reminding them to take advantage of our pre-opening deal. A final e-blast was sent a week prior to opening, creating ‘last-chance’ urgency.
Our Facebook ads yielded 492,723 impressions and 9,115 clicks-through to the campaign website four months prior to opening. On opening day, the hotel Facebook page had 15,185 highly engaged fans, setting an Intercontinental Hotel’s Group brand record.
Show Us Your Beach Love’ contest received 649 entries and 17,929 votes. The photo with the most votes – posted by one lucky family of four – won a seven-day stay at the new Holiday Inn Resort, hotel in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
The campaign broke IHG’s pre-opening sales records. Gotta love that!
Killington Deal Takes Innisfree Beyond the Beach
Innisfree Hotels Expands into Ski Market with Vermont Acquisition
We’re excited to announce we are expanding our hospitality expertise from sandy shores to snow-capped slopes and building upon our portfolio of successful beachfront properties with the acquisition of The Inn at Six Mountains in Killington, Vermont. Our plan is to now focus on a multi-million dollar renovation of this extraordinary Vermont property, expanding into the Green Mountain state by transforming and rebranding this hotel into a comfortable all-season resort. The 104-room lodge will feature exceptional amenities. Its picturesque backdrop, adjacent 18-hole golf course will position the property as the idyllic setting for weddings, corporate retreats and outdoor events of all kinds.
Innisfree’s Vermont-based partner John L. Kalish, Esq., of The Killington Hospitality Group, LLC, says this deal is the first of its kind in the state from the standpoint of purchasing an established condo hotel and converting it to a privately held single asset hotel. “With the highly anticipated renovations and our strong partnership, I am very confident that this property will be repositioned as the best hotel in the market,” Kalish says. “It is our goal to provide comfortable accommodations and unmatched customer service in a beautiful environment. We plan to be very engaged with the local business communities and look forward to providing a place our friends and neighbors will be proud of.”
The Janee Hotel Corporation headquartered in Naperville, Illinois, also partnered in the acquisition. President Kenneth Moore says, “We look forward to working with our partners in updating the property and making it an exceptional year-round destination resort hotel.”
Killington Mountain is one of the Top 10 most visited resorts in the world and the largest ski and snowboard resort in Eastern North America with over 70 miles of skiable terrain. Its 3,050-foot vertical drop and world-renowned snowmaking and grooming coverage have made this destination a perennial favorite for outdoor enthusiasts. ski, golf, hike, fish, mountain biking, summer festivals and fall foliage round out the resort’s annual recreation attractions.
“After seeing the commitment of Killington’s owners, Powdr Corp, to invest in the mountain and improve the village we decided to make an investment too. We look forward to other opportunities in the area with the same upside potential. The move from beach to mountain will mark new ground for Innisfree, while keeping in line with our mission of “creating fun, memorable experiences” for travelers, says, Julian MacQueen, Innisfree’s CEO and Founder.
Content Marketing Strategy
What makes our in-house agency’s social content some of the best in the country? We’ve got one word for you: storytelling.
It’s simple, really. We have learned that creating exceptional content is essential to establishing a travel brand. That’s why we use high-resolution images and clever captions to tell visual stories that convey our beachfront experience – instead of selling our hotels with daily, persistent and mundane sales posts.
Our content strategy is a mix of trendy hashtags, beach life mantras, inspirational quotes and local event posts, supplemented with an everflowing supply of user-generated content (UGC). We like to keep it simple and fun, visually appealing and easy-to-read. This gives us a competitive advantage and increases our organic reach.
We love what our users are posting and saying about our hotels and destinations. So we share it freely and encourage our guests to keep it coming. User Generated Content has become a cornerstone of our content strategy, because viewers love to see REAL people having REAL fun. It’s also a great source of destination photography, deepening relationships with our guests who are excited the hotel has chosen to share their work on our platforms.
Guests and prospective visitors want to hear the story of our hotels from someone outside of the marketing department. UGC allows us to showcase memories our guests have made at every property, giving us true insight to what our guests like and what they want out of their vacations. (How’s that for relatable?)
We’re also well known for our ‘live like a local’ advice, which we distribute to establish ourselves as area experts, sharing ‘in the know’ tips and tricks to enhance guest experience while further trademarking our laid-back, fun personality.
When fans (or naysayers) comment on our pages, we respond to them in a friendly and conversational way to increase guest engagement. If someone posts a criticism of one of our properties, we publicly and transparently address it to show them we care, and that we are working to turn things around.
In 2014, we moved from sharing a majority of curated content to creating custom tiles. Today, we almost exclusively post our own branded content, including area event information, reviews and fun, customized posts.
We have even incorporated Real Time Marketing into our content strategy, always seeking opportunities that have a natural tie-in to our business. We stay on top of trends, news and current events so we can be reactive on social media.
Social listening helps us track the social activity around our hotels and within our communities. With these technologies, we can identify influencers and leads, surprise and delight our guests, and pinpoint areas of success and weakness. We use this data to gain a competitive advantage over other hotels in our market, increasing direct bookings and revenue.
But enough of the jargon. If you’ll excuse us, we have to get back to telling our story …
Expanding to New Territory with Acquisition
Holiday Inn Resort in Traverse City, MI Joins the Innisfree Family
Innisfree Hotels is well known in the Southeastern United States for our management and ownership of some of the best properties along the Gulf Coast. Now, our success at developing and operating award-winning hotels and resorts in destination markets has earned the attention of accommodations owners throughout the country.
Upon opening in February 2011, the Holiday Inn Resort Pensacola Beach earned Innisfree Hotels and founder Julian MacQueen the InterContinental Hotels Group Developer of the Year award, as well as three subsequent IHG awards for Quality Excellence. The Holiday Inn Resort Fort Walton Beach, which opened in May 2014, has already received the IHG Design Excellence Award and achieved 100% market penetration within its first 30 days.
These facts and more, according to Innisfree Regional Director of Operations Jason Nicholson, led to a conversation with the owners of West Bay Beach Holiday Inn Resort in Traverse City, Michigan – who ultimately presented Innisfree Hotels with the opportunity to manage the resort beginning in November 2014.
With acquisitions like this one, Innisfree is establishing itself as a leader in hotel management. West Bay Beach, a Holiday Inn Resort, was previously managed by Interstate Hotels – the largest hotel management company in the nation.
To earn this contract was a major coup for Innisfree, says company president Mike Nixon.
“The owners ultimately found our culture and ideals to be more aligned with theirs,” Nixon says. “And because we are a smaller ship,” he notes, “we can turn on a dime.”
This was important to West Bay owners, who wanted a more efficient, digitally engaged, faster-reacting business model that could translate growing revenues and increasingly positive guest satisfaction into higher earnings, Nicholson says.
Having just completed a multi-million dollar renovation, West Bay Beach Resort is the first Holiday Inn Resort in the Midwest.
“We are the only full-service resort on West Grand Traverse Bay and are located within walking distance to downtown Traverse City, Michigan,” says Kelly Jo Bowman, Director of Sale & Marketing for West Bay Beach. “West Bay Beach Resort offers a wide variety of amenities such as complimentary shuttle service to the local area, including Cherry Capital International Airport, concierge service, both indoor and outdoor pools and more.”
The resort has 179 newly renovated guest rooms and more than 6,000 square feet of flexible meeting space. Its beautiful dining venues offer panoramic views of West Bay, outdoor patio seating, an entertainment lounge with specialty cocktails, Michigan microbrews on tap and an extensive local wine menu. The experienced sales and catering teams expertly manage events and meetings of all sizes.
Innisfree Hotels took over operations for West Bay Beach on November 19, 2014, and immediately went to work identifying opportunities to move more revenue to the bottom line while improving the property’s digital marketing and engagement efforts – with the help of our in-house marketing agency.
Innisfree President Retires
Innisfree Corporate Structure Shifts as Harlan Butler Moves into Board Position
In a year of tremendous growth and optimism for both Northwest Florida regional tourism and Innisfree Hotels, the hotel management company will mark a new chapter when longstanding president Harlan Butler retires and VP of operations Mike Nixon assumes the role.
Butler has enjoyed a 25-year tenure at Innisfree Hotels, taking the company from a local operation to the national stage. When he began in 1989, Innisfree had just 100 employees and a handful of hotels, mostly suburban limited-service properties. Today, the company owns or manages an estate of beachfront, full-service hotels and has a team of more than 1,200 employees – with $100 million in annual revenue and $500 million in assets.
Butler has always been the public face of Innisfree. In fact, people often confuse him with founder and CEO Julian MacQueen.
“It has been a profound honor to work for Julian MacQueen and his wife, Kim,” Butler says. “In the future, I will always strive to improve and protect Innisfree Hotels to the best of my ability.”
Butler retired from his day-to-day responsibilities on December 31, 2014, but will continue to play an active role in the company, building upon his personal and professional legacy of community service. An adventurer and avid equestrian, he also plans to travel extensively.
“The world is a big place, and I am itching to get out there and see it all,” Butler says.
The MacQueens have made the decision to turn Innisfree into a legacy company and will establish a Board of Directors to manage it, maintaining its special culture and philanthropic values. Butler will serve as the Board’s inaugural member.
VP of operations Mike Nixon will step into the role of president upon Harlan’s move to the Board position. His career with Innisfree began on April Fool’s Day in 1994, perhaps fitting with the jovial spirit he brings to the company.
“People enjoy working with me because I love having fun, but I also know when it’s time to be serious and get to work,” Nixon says. Nixon plans to focus on managing Innisfree’s growth without losing the culture for which it is known. As one of his biggest mentors at the company, Butler will no doubt play a role in its new direction.
Trends in Digital Hospitality
Learning to Fail, Being Agile and Other Fun Ideas
These days it’s impossible to think about marketing without considering the implications of the digital revolution.
The phrase “Web 2.0″ started to buzz more than a decade ago. The concept was a simple one, empowering web users to interact and collaborate with each other online rather than limiting them to the passive viewing of content. This seemingly simple technological innovation turned out to be the most profound driver of social change since the industrial revolution. Talking to each other online has transformed our lives – affecting how we heal ourselves, meet our mates, consume media, grow food, do politics and wage war.
There’s no doubt that digital media has changed the customer’s purchasing journey. When technology enabled consumers to seek advice and information from each other on a massive scale, it splintered the marketing funnel into a tremendous number of continually shifting touch points. Nowhere is this more evident than in the hospitality industry, where interactive online forums have wholly transformed the relationship between hotels and their guests.
There’s little doubt that the speed of change will continue to ramp up. Remaining entrenched in what you know is comfortable, but also dangerous in these turbulent times. Hotels can build economic resilience by adapting to the digital world and testing unfamiliar strategies.
To this end, here are some big ideas to consider.
Escalating Customer Expectations
It is no longer enough to meet your guest’s expectations. Alternative choices are just one click, one Google search or one TripAdvisor listing away. Hotels that differentiate themselves by surprising and delighting their guests will stand out in the crowded World Wide Web.
Collaborate Inside and Out
Digital life is fluidly integrated and cross-functional. It’s a massive, real-time collaboration. Consumers don’t distinguish among types of online content. Advertising, product information and even news are all viewed through the same ‘social’ lens. In stark contrast, traditional corporate life runs like a relay race with each department operating discreetly and passing the baton upon completion of tasks.
When a guest digitally interacts with a hotel, he expects and assumes that he’s communicating with the entire company, not just one department. Hundreds of customers may interact with a single hotel every day. These interactions must be filtered, interpreted and distributed in order to bring the “Voice of the Customer” into operational decisions.
The question is how does customer data flow from the marketing department into operations quickly, seamlessly and, most importantly, proactively? The internal adoption of digital tools that increase collaboration may empower disparate team members to make quick operational iterations that improve customer experiences.
Entertain Me! Be Useful! Everywhere!
In the age of “infobesity,” the biggest gift hotel guests and prospects can give the customer is attention. Utility marketing is about delivering such incredible value at all touch points that you become part of your customer’s life.
Content must entertain and be generously useful. Hotels need to dedicate more resources to “surprise and delight” and intangible strategies like being fun, telling great stories and providing value if they want to stand out.
Mobile & Multi-Channel
Hotels need to meet the quick response expectations of today’s mobile consumers. Success rests with communicating a consistent image, and providing value every place the hotel interacts with its guests – including online search, social media, on property service and post-stay reviews.
Agility
Digital interactions are fast-paced and fleeting, so impactful participation requires agility and iteration. Gone is the luxury of spending a month crafting a long-running campaign, setting it loose in the world and then assessing the results on the finish line. Instead, marketers need to execute short-term, customer-focused, iterative projects using real-time data.
Agility requires digital teams to dismantle complex organizational structures, foster collaboration, remove processes that slow them down and use project management tools to tame overwhelming volumes of work so they can get out of reactive mode and focus on initiatives that drive growth. If the organization in which they dwell isn’t agile, it’s difficult for the marketing department to deploy real-time strategies. Cumbersome approval processes, unclear goals, fear of failure and risk adversity all hinder agility.
As marketers become more responsible for growth, they have an unprecedented need for speed and flexibility. Agility may equal a tremendous competitive advantage, and hotels that figure it out first will outperform the rest.
Revenue From Top to Bottom
Distribution expenses associated with Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) are currently growing faster than hotel industry RevPar and ADR. At the same time, metasearch platforms are disrupting hotel room distribution. Metasearch engines aggregate data, such as rates and availability, from multiple OTA and hotel websites and then concisely display it in search results. The inherent transparency of metasearch results are diluting rates, as hoteliers cannot differentiate their product via self-described amenities and services in brief search results.
Combating metasearch will be no easy task. Power in the metasearch market is consolidating in a small number of savvy gatekeepers with deep pockets who enjoy a near monopoly on demand, including Google Hotel Finder, TripAdvisor, Trivago and Kayak. These giants outspend the major hotel brands on search advertising by a ratio of four-to-one.
If current trends continue, the potential exists for hotels to pay transaction fees on as much as half of their inventory to a small number of large media companies controlling demand. This fact underscores the importance of creating smart data-driven channel distribution strategies. It highlights the critical need for sales, marketing and revenue management departments to intentionally integrate their customer acquisition strategies.
The inability to do so will result in rising customer acquisition costs and eroding profit margins. Conversely, careful tracking of costs and benefits associated with every revenue channel will enable hotel managers to pursue a mix that results in more revenue flowing through to the bottom line.
Building Social Relationships
Social media is now fully integrated with travel and hospitality decision-making, providing a beneficial opportunity to develop relationships with guests, as well as creating transparencies that highlight service inconsistencies.
Differentiation, Value & Authentic Experiences
Differentiation, value and authentic local experiences will influence consumer decisions in 2015. In mid-market hotels, where differentiation is harder to achieve, hotels may combine value-added services with authentic local experiences to stand out. Consumers today are more willing to pay for quality experiences than hard products.
Consumers are also increasingly value conscious, with the internet providing unlimited scope for price comparison and greater transparency of the guest experience. Products with clear value for money will be the most resilient.
Innisfree’s in-house marketing agency, is excited to see what comes next!
Endowing Education: UWF Hospitality Degree
The program will be renamed The MacQueen Guest Experience Program.
Julian and Kim MacQueen, founders of Innisfree Hotels, pledged a $250,000 gift commitment to the University of West Florida Hospitality program.
This mutually beneficial partnership will enable UWF hospitality students to participate in onsite training, internships and field experiences at Innisfree Hotels properties located Pensacola Beach, Fla. and Orange Beach, Ala.
In turn, Innisfree will benefit from having a future workforce locally trained and integrated within the corporate culture. The partnership will also allow UWF to develop a more unified hospitality curriculum, designed to address current identified industry needs.
There are currently more than 200 students enrolled in the Hospitality, Recreation and Resort Management program at UWF. Recent partnerships, including the MacQueen gift and the direct-admit program with Northwest Florida State College are expected to increase the enrollment to more than 350 students by 2015.
“At Innisfree, we live and breathe our core principles, and believe that if you give people purpose, they’ll do a whole lot with it,” said Julian MacQueen, at a press conference hosted by UWF to announce the donation.
Innisfree believes in hiring for attitude and then teaching the skill. Mr. and Mrs. MacQueen are honored to support the hospitality faculty at UWF, and to bolster their efforts to foster excellence among subsequent generations of hospitality industry leaders.
Follow this link for additional information about the MacQueen Guest Experience Management program.
Electrifying the Board of Gulf Power
Gulf Power Company is an investor-owned electric utility with all of its common stock owned by Atlanta-based Southern Company
Julian MacQueen, Founder & CEO of Innisfree Hotels, Inc., has been elected to the Gulf Power Company board of directors. “Julian brings a wealth of entrepreneurial experience, wisdom and leadership to our board,” said Stan Connally, Gulf Power President and CEO. “We believe his knowledge of the tourism business and his track record of investing in Northwest Florida will make him a valuable asset to our team.”
Gulf Power serves more than 430,000 customers in eight counties throughout Northwest Florida. The company’s mission is to safely provide exceptional customer value by delivering reliable, affordable and environmentally responsible electricity while strengthening our communities. Visit online at GulfPower.com or on the company’s Facebook page, “Gulf Power Company.”
MacQueen founded Innisfree Hotels in 1985 and has directed the acquisition, development, sales and refurbishment of properties in the company portfolio. Some of those properties include the Hilton, the Hampton Inn and the Holiday Inn Resort on Pensacola Beach, FL as well as the new Red Fish, Blue Fish Restaurant. He is also constructed the Holiday Inn Resort in Fort Walton Beach and owns and operates hotel properties in south Alabama.
Before founding Innisfree, MacQueen worked as a sales manager for the Hyatt Corporation in Knoxville, Tenn., and served as the Executive Vice President of the Family Inns of America.
He is a Certified Hotel Administrator and serves on a number of organizational boards including the Beach Community Bank, Independence for the Blind of Northwest Florida, Sacred Heart Hospital and Take Stock in Children Foundation. He is a member of the United Way Tocqueville Society and chairman of the Escambia County Destination Marketing Organization.
MacQueen is a graduate of the University of South Alabama with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology.
Founder & CEO Honored by Alma Mater
Julian MacQueen Receives Alumni Award from the University of South Alabama
On Friday, March 7, 2014, CEO and Founder of Innisfree Hotels Julian MacQueen received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of South Alabama at the National Alumni Association’s Annual Awards Gala.
The Distinguished Alumni Award recognizes outstanding individuals who have demonstrated significant achievement and leadership in their field over an extended period of time.
MacQueen graduated from the University of South Alabama in 1973 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. He started Innisfree Hotels in 1986 and has since grown the company from a single property operation to one of the largest hotel management companies in the southern United States.
Today, Innisfree has over 2,000 rooms and 1,000 employees. Innisfree’s success is partly attributed to MacQueen’s mandate of fostering a workplace culture that celebrates creativity, dignity and principled corporate citizenship. Under his guidance, Innisfree adopted a Triple Bottom Line business model, which means implementing the use of an expanded spectrum of criteria for measuring success that values communities, sustainability and profit in equal measure.
The Distinguished Alumni and Service Awards program is the largest, most prestigious annual event hosted by the university. The National Alumni Association launched the awards program in 2005. Since its creation, only 71 graduates have received this honor. Click here to learn more about the Alumni Association at USA.