How Strategy Works – a Client Case Study

Joe du Plooy “As a group we have worked with the team on the Holiday Inn Sandton and Crowne Plaza Johannesburg – The Rosebank websites and online marketing strategies. It has been a pleasure to deal with such professionals and we have achieved great results for the business.”

Andrew Rodgers

Deputy CEO HPF

Hospitality Property Fund, which own over 20 properties in South Africa have embraced online as a key component of their marketing mix especially for their internationally branded properties, Crowne Plaza Johannesburg -The Rosebank and Holiday Inn Sandton.

Whilst both these properties feature within the Inter-Continental brand stable and enjoy the international visibility that the group presence provides online, HPF have also recognized that their local market is imperative and have therefore established a focused strategy to feature for and attract the local market.

Therefore stand-alone sites have been developed and optimized to ensure they rank on the search engines for the keywords they believe their target market will search for and are continuously updating the content on their sites to ensure that the keywords change with the guests’ habits.

Closely linked to this is webPR, with articles developed and distributed linking back to the sites with information related to the events, this also includes tips on what is happening in and around the areas that the hotels are situated. These have helped to build incoming links to the site which contribute to a more rapid ranking on Google and also position the hotels as industry experts.

Because it takes time to get indexed and a good ranking of the search engines, the hotels have also opted for pay per click advertising for special offers like Mother’s Day or Easter. This form of advertising provides a large increase in qualified traffic to the site and once the user is there converting them is so much easier as the ad content was obviously within the scope of their research.

“This integrated approach to generating results online has already generated great results for our Holiday Inn Sandton Property”, says Deputy CEO of HPF, Andrew Rogers “and with the recent roll-out of the stand-alone site for Crowne Plaza Johannesburg - The Rosebank, we expect the same results, if not better as this was already an established hotel within the market before the rebranding”.

The key to integrated activity is in the analysis and reporting. How is the site performing? Which pages are most visited? What is the bounce rate and how to lower it? Which campaigns are working and how to improve those that have poor results? Are the stated objectives being met and what tweaks need to be made to the implemented strategy to keep achieving these results? This is a vital component of the emarketing strategy for the hotels in order to remain focused.