The 716-room Tuscany Suites & Casino in Las Vegas offers an experience that appeals to both locals and hotel guests alike. While locals flock to the casino, they don’t usually stay at the hotel, making for an interesting business mix of locals, transient, and group—and one that can be a challenge when it comes to marketing and capturing direct bookings.Casino Entrance Fountain-004

    The Challenge

    As a small operation, the team found it harder and harder to reduce guest acquisition costs and compete with the large gaming organizations around the corner due to disparities in marketing spend. Too many bookings were coming in through OTAs. A lot of effort was trial and error. The team knew it needed the right partners as the hotel was not getting its fair share of direct bookings and giving up market share to its competitors.

    Over-reliance on third parties was weighing heavily on the bottom line as commissions continued to increase. When OTAs stipulated commission on resort fees, it took a large chunk of Tuscany’s Average Daily Rate.

    Leadership at Tuscany knew that increasing direct bookings would save costs while also providing a better customer experience.

    The Solution

    A big problem was that Tuscany used a PMS that didn’t integrate with other systems, which meant its booking engine was antiquated at best. They first moved to a new PMS product and quickly found it wasn’t the best for the booking engine. That’s when the team found SHR’s Windsurfer CRS with native IBE, offering a simplified and integrated booking process.

    With SHR’s partnership, Tuscany has been able to create a seamless experience from the website to the booking engine to reduce the amount of clicks guests make between looking to booking. What’s more, the booking engine experiences fewer outages or issues than Tuscany’s previous solution. If there are issues, leadership credits the relationship it can leverage with SHR when they need support. They are no longer stuck in the break-fix cycle from their previous partner, as SHR acts on feedback and responds in a timely manner—meaning Tuscany doesn’t need to worry about leaving any money on the table from lost booking conversion.

    Once Tuscany upgraded its booking engine with SHR, the team turned to Sojern to drive up the market share of direct conversion through digital marketing such as social campaigns and search engine marketing tools. Sojern’s cost-per-acquisition pricing model is perfect for Tuscany’s smaller operation because it leads to a tangible return on investment. The partnership also means Tuscany is able to build more awareness so that guests know about the property and its amenities, and the team can push out more pre-arrival marketing.

    Tuscany’s leadership credits Sojern’s pre-built model as a key to success. As a smaller team with little resources to build a digital ad campaign, they look to Sojern’s expertise via analytics and their database—taking all the work out of the equation while still reaping all of the rewards.

     

    The Results

    Leveraging SHR and Sojern’s expertise, Tuscany Suites & Casino was able to realize some measurable wins, including:

    • Creating a seamless booking-engine experience that drives more direct bookings
    • Exiting a frustrating break-fix cycle left from the previous partner
    • Gaining $700,000 in direct revenue through the Sojern partnership
    • Realizing a tangible ROI due to Sojern’s cost-per-acquisition model

    Part of Tuscany’s higher year-over-year ADRs and longer lengths of stay can be attributed to their strategies to target a different mix of travelers and drive business direct. Several seasonal promotions offered discounts for stays of four nights or longer.

    In 2020, when they first collaborated with SHR, ADR was under $60 and the Average Length of Stay was 2.5 days. From Jan 2021 through August 2021, the property recorded an ADR of $80 and LOS has moved past three nights.

    Related Resources

    How Cheval Collection increased revenue by 82% through using SHR Group’s digital expertise

    Luxury residence group targets paid advertising to boost presence and increase revenue

    Read More

    How allora.ai helped Spier hotel grow direct revenue by 73% yOY

    A forward thinking hotel ready to collaborate with a progressive technology partner

    Read More

    How SHR Group helped Harvey’s Point grow revenue by 185%

    Luxury hotel utilizes progressive technology partner to increase revenue Harvey’s Point is a 4 Star Luxury Donegal hotel, set in the idyllic...

    Read More