An elegant inner city featuring cafés and shops, a beautiful park, the Hessian State Theatre and countless thermal spas, make Wiesbaden a unique travel destination.
Town Hotel is located in a quiet side street only a short walk from all these sights. With only 24 rooms it is one of the few family-owned hotels in town that has earned a reputation for personal and attentive service.
We recently spoke to owner Matthias Gerber and his son Tom. They told us about how SiteMinder has improved their day-to-day business and even helped them to increase their online sales.
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More efficient processes make things easier for staff
When the travel industry came to an abrupt halt during the pandemic, Matthias and Tom used the break to implement new systems, including a cloud-based PMS and SiteMinder’s channel manager.
“We used to manually manage our profiles and rates across different OTAs and our website. That took up an enormous amount of time. We even had to manually update each reservation because our booking channels and our PMS were not connected,” Matthias recalled.
Now these processes have become a lot more efficient at Town Hotel. The integration of SiteMinder and the PMS means that reservation data is updated automatically and in real time. At the same time, availability is adjusted across all channels, which reduces the risk of overbookings.
“We save two hours a day using SiteMinder. This is an enormous relief, particularly because we’ve been working with a smaller team since the pandemic,” Tom added.
Dynamic online distribution and more revenue
The channel manager feature has also helped Town Hotel to improve its online reach.
“In the past our team only had enough time to actively manage a limited number of booking channels. Thanks to the channel manager feature we can connect to more channels while putting in less work. As a result, our online bookings rose by about 10%,” Matthias stated.
SiteMinder also helps with dynamic rate design. “When our staff adjust rates or when demand is on the rise because of a local event, we can now respond to it more quickly. We just set the new rate once, which is then sent to all connected booking channels,” Tom explained.
In other words, Town Hotel is in an ideal position to generate more bookings at the optimal price. This in turn has a positive impact on occupancy and revenue.
Strong customer support
According to Matthias working with SiteMinder was a positive experience from the very beginning: “The onboarding was great. The team set aside sufficient time for us and supported us throughout the implementation process.”
And even when things are not going as seamlessly as they should, Town Hotel quickly receives the required support. “Rate mapping sometimes is challenging, but SiteMinder is easy to reach, and the support is always very helpful and friendly,” he added.
We want to thank Matthias and Tom for providing these fascinating insights, and we hope that SiteMinder will continue to support their success in the future!
