Smoky Mountain Resorts combines family-friendly accommodation with the exhilaration of adventure across three Tennessee locations.
Whether it’s seasonal river tubing at Creekstone Inn located at Little Pigeon River, waterpark action at Country Cascades in the heart of Pigeon Forge, or indoor and outdoor slides at The Resort at Governor’s Crossing in Sevierville, guests are in for a summer to remember.
All of the hotels have stunning views of nature and are located in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee.
Director of Commercial Strategy, Heather Minyard, takes great pride in creating experiences tailored to meet the unique needs of guests.
“Operating hotels in one of the most saturated tourism markets in the Southeast means that we must always continue evolving and investing in our growth both as a brand and with our offerings to guests,” she explained.
“As a brand, we strongly lean into our unique selling propositions for each property to help us stand out and offer guests a wonderful experience.”
With more than 600 rooms to manage across three bustling properties that also provide a great food and beverage experience, it takes a lot to do it successfully.
Thankfully, SiteMinder’s platform was perfectly suited to ensure the group not only managed operations seamlessly, but flourished.
Crucial ease of use, efficiency, and data
With a complete suite of integrated features, SiteMinder enables hotels and multi-property groups to manage their most important tasks from one interface.
“The remarkable ease of use for the booking engine, channel manager and metasearch and swift issue resolution made my experience with the platform highly satisfying,” explained Heather.
“I greatly value promptly updating rates, efficiently managing various tasks, and maintaining seamless connectivity with the platform. It liberates me from the laborious manual tasks that were once the standard practice, significantly enhancing my workflow.”
With features such as the channel manager and booking engine, hotels can enjoy fully automated inventory management in real-time, take direct bookings seamlessly via their own website, and also attract direct bookings from metasearch sites like Google.
There’s no need to worry about double bookings, manual data entry, or user errors.
“This newfound efficiency enables me to allocate more time and attention to meaningful tasks, secure in the knowledge that any potential issues will receive the swift and effective attention they require,” said Heather.
“SiteMinder’s user-friendly nature is invaluable in optimizing my productivity and overall work experience, making it an indispensable asset to my daily operations.”
It also allows the group to optimize their channel mix for maximum bookings and revenue.
“Our current channel mix has allowed us to reach a variety of guest demographics to maximize our revenue. Similar to how different demographics use different social media platforms to obtain information, we have noticed that different demographics rely on different booking channels to do their travel research and purchase decision-making,” she said.
“For instance, younger families often discover us through social media-driven booking channels, while our mature travelers prefer more traditional OTA platforms.”
On top of this, a feature like SiteMinder Insights means Heather and the team can always ensure they are competitive in the market.
“For our growing marketing and sales department, analytics plays a crucial role in how we approach our pricing strategy and decision-making,” she said,
“We closely monitor competitor rates on a daily basis, allowing us to make timely adjustments to our pricing strategy to ensure we remain a preferred choice for guests.”
With SiteMinder, this process is made quick and simple with unlimited daily rate shops and a user-friendly interface that makes the data simple to digest.
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Three years of excellence and counting
With extensive third-party integrations, including to leading PMSs, SiteMinder has been able to serve Smoky Mountain Resorts well in this respect.
“It is imperative for us at Smoky Mountain Resorts to have our distribution platform integrated into our PMS. We get notified of cancellations through the integrations, which allows better visibility on inventory and guest records,” explained Heather.
“This integration not only optimizes our internal processes but also enhances the guest experience by ensuring smooth booking and check-in procedures and improving overall guest satisfaction.”
The brand has been relying on SiteMinder for over three years, and Heather can attest to the fact that the platform only gets better over time as new and improved features are rolled out.
“It has been a remarkable journey witnessing the continuous evolution and improvements made to the platform. Over this extended period, I have come to appreciate how diligently the SiteMinder team has worked to enhance its functionality and features, leaving me with the distinct impression that there is little, if anything at all, left to be desired,” she said.
“The team’s dedication to refining and expanding the platform has resulted in a robust and highly effective tool that has consistently met and exceeded my expectations.”
SiteMinder is certainly proud to hear this feedback, as it’s our mission to continue to solve challenges for hoteliers as new requirements arise. The industry is not static – technology changes, guest behavior changes, customer service changes. It’s important to SiteMinder that we ensure our customers are always keeping pace with the modern travel market.
Confidence in future success
In a constantly evolving landscape, Heather believes effective revenue management will involve AI in some form and is prepared for it.
“AI has already started to benefit our revenue management through suggested rate optimizations and trend forecasting. We are particularly excited about the potential of predictive analytics and the continued optimizations of AI-driven rate optimization, which we believe will enable even more personalized pricing strategies tailored to each guest’s booking behavior,” she said.
Because of SiteMinder’s willingness and ability to constantly seek and achieve improvement, Heather has no doubts that whatever hurdles she is faced with in the future can be cleared effortlessly with the help of the industry’s leading smart platform.
“My extended experience with SiteMinder has instilled in me a high degree of confidence in the platform’s ability to meet my evolving needs effectively,” she stated.
“It has become an indispensable part of my daily operations, allowing me to streamline various aspects of my work while knowing that any necessary enhancements have been diligently worked upon,” she continued.
“In conclusion, my association with SiteMinder has been nothing short of exceptional, and I am thoroughly content with the current state of the platform. The consistent efforts put forth by the SiteMinder team to refine and improve their product have culminated in a highly reliable and user-friendly solution that I fully trust and appreciate.”
Thank you Heather! We couldn’t have wished for better feedback and we wish Smoky Mountain Resorts all the very best in the future as we continue to work together.