Blue Square Produces Online Revenue for Portola Plaza Hotel
PHOENIX, AZ, August 24, 2006. Portola Plaza Hotel has achieved dramatic results --a 68 percent increase in on-line reservations, a 94 percent increase in revenue from on-line bookings and a 15 percent increase in revenue per reservation booked on-line -- since selecting Blue Square Studios (bluesqstudios.com) and the company's proprietary Hospitality Toolkit to create and launch an aggressive e-marketing and Internet distribution initiative.
After selecting Blue Square in January 2005, and implementing e-marketing initiatives including Hospitality Toolkit e-commerce tracking capabilities, Portola Plaza achieved a three-fold improvement in bookings for the year. Already in 2006, the website has exceeded these 2005 online booking results achieving a 147 percent increase in online bookings and a 126 percent increase in revenues for the January-July timeframe compared to the same period last year.
Pay Per Click results are equally impressive: a 210 percent increase in clicks (on a seven percent decrease in cost-per-click), a 195 percent increase in conversions and a 29 percent increase in revenue per conversion. For the period May-July 2006 compared to the same period in 2005 (and a modest increase in funding for the pay-per-click campaign), Portola realized a significant increase in revenue, not including revenues achieved through food & beverage and other ancillary sales (retail, spa, etc.) or revenues from guests who clicked through but booked via an alternate method (other third-party sites such as Expedia or the toll-free reservations center).
"Blue Square Studios' Hospitality Toolkit allowed us to measure and benchmark our e-marketing campaigns, PPC campaigns and our targeted organic search engine optimization to increase our traffic and ultimately increase our Internet-driven reservations," said Wade Bryant, the Director of Sales & Marketing at The Portola Plaza Hotel. "There is no doubt that the site's design is encouraging those who come to the hotel's website to book, directly and through other, off-line channels. By providing the tools to track performance and evaluate the return on investment in segmented ways, Blue Square has given us an extremely sophisticated analytical capability for measuring and refining our online success."
"The Portola Plaza continues to produce impressive results and as a result Blue Square Studios is proud to showcase them as one of our 'Best Practice' clients," said Jake Smack, Director of eMarketing for Blue Square Studios. "Blue Square Studios congratulates the Portola Sales and Marketing team led by Wade Bryant on the success of their electronic distribution marketing strategy. Their commitment is evident in their proactive and aggressive daily management of organic search and pay-per-click opportunities. Remaining vigilant in this highly opportunistic and growing channel of distribution will continue yielding high returns for the Portola Plaza."
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