Case Study 2: Regional Victoria

Property

Location: Regional Victoria

Type of Accommodation: Boutique ‘Homestead’ Accommodation

Number of Rooms: 15

Opportunity

After returning home to Australia in early 2020, the owner inherited the family’s historic homestead located within 30 minutes’ drive of a popular Victorian tourism destination. Undertaking significant renovations to deliver a unique, and luxurious, accommodation experience in central Victoria, guests can now take a step-back-in-time to another era, whilst being able view the family’s rich pastoral heritage with the property continuing to operate as a working farm.

The owner had plans to target high-end, exclusive-use weddings, corporate team building events, leisure travellers seeking uniquely Australian experiences and multi-generational families and groups of friends wanting to come together in the one place.

Actions

• RevenYou visited the property to better understand the unique experience and how it operated.

• Following the visit, and after further online meetings with the owner incorporating our Revenue Manager and Marketing Consultant, the following actions were implemented:

• Rewrote the property’s website to highlight the uniqueness of the offering, differentiate the available accommodation experiences and better showcase the property’s rich history and stories.

• Reviewed the pricing strategy and recommended that only a Dinner, Bed and Breakfast be bookable to provide a better guest experience, whilst ensuring a more profitable business model in a region that has been heavily impacted by staffing shortages and ongoing operational cost increases.

• Identified the need periods and developed a mid-week pricing strategy that provides a more enhanced guest experience.

• Reviewed the pricing for incremental revenue streams and allowed these to be pre-booked in advance.

• Updated all third-party distribution partners to ensure visibility of this new product experience in the market – including promotion of the individual rooms and the individual story behind each name.

• Created a digital wedding collateral piece, that complemented the new website content and better showcased the range of experiences available.

• Developed a new ‘FROM’ pricing strategy for wedding enquiries that is simple and easy to use.

• Wrote a SOP for the onsite team to follow when taking enquiries.

Outcomes

• Within the first month, individual bookings for the accommodation rose by 30%.

• Within three months of implementing the new wedding collateral piece and pricing strategy, the property had eight exclusive-use wedding bookings confirmed.

• Exclusive-use bookings have increased to an average of two per month with several high-profile guests booking because of the property’s guaranteed privacy and helicopter accessibility.

• The property now ranks on Google Search and is achieving a steady growth in click throughs.

Next Steps:

• The growth in exclusive-use enquiries and bookings have provided the owner with the financial security to be able to accelerate the next phase in his long-term business plan - to convert an unused farm building to an all-weather event space for clients to book - removing the costly expense that guests currently incur to hire a marquee.