A REVAMPED MARKETING FOCUS and a series of customer contact strategies is paying off for Noble House Hotels and Resorts.
In the fourth quarter of 2001, Noble House started a guest-recognition program offering first-time visitors a thank-you letter and a $200 gift certificate that’s good for 12 months.
The Kirkland, WA-based chain hosts an average of 13,000 new guests per quarter. During the first three months of 2002, customers who received the thank-you letter spent some $300,000 at the 12 Noble House properties. During the program’s first year, these guests will generate between $1 million and $1.5 million, estimates John Davies, vice president for sales and marketing.
It’s not an exact science, as he is quick to admit. There is some repeat business the hotels would have earned even without the mailing. But Davies feels that at least during this year’s first quarter, between 75% and 80% of the spending was spurred by the mailing.
Individual properties themselves are getting into the act. Take Noble House’s collection of four small resorts in Florida: Grove Island, La Playa Beach & Golf, Little Palm Island and Ocean Key. Late last year they used overlay data to identify and segment high-worth guests — those with net worth above $2 million. With rates that run between $800 and $1,200 a night for these four properties, these admittedly weren’t hard to isolate.
Noble House further limited the list to visitors interested in fine food, wine, travel and cultural activities. The resulting customers were the first group targeted by the chain’s new Noble Club program, which provides premium guests with “soft benefits” — bonuses such as additional in-room amenities and automatic upgrades.
The company enclosed plastic Noble Club cards in 60,000 newsletters that were mailed late in 2001. During the first few months of this year, guests carrying the card spent $825,000 on room fees and amenities.
The program was expanded this past winter throughout the entire chain, and now boasts about 142,000 members. While all program participants are now enrolled at the same level, Davies says one long-term goal is to place these members into tiers based on their value to the company.
Roll these efforts together with each property’s own mail programs (the 12 resorts do a variety of outreach mailings, targeting travel agents, meetings and conference planning groups and consumers) and it’s easy to see why Noble House had a first quarter Davies called “spectacular.”
In light of the post-Sept. 11 travel slowdown, the timing of the various program launches was fortuitous. “Most of this stuff was in place,” Davies says of the initiatives that began after the attacks. “Where a lot of hotel companies were pulling in the reins in marketing, we were doing just the opposite.”
In fact, while the hospitality industry overall was losing customers, during 2001 Noble House properties gained 11% market share in their competitive sectors. And in the first quarter of 2002, the chain pulled another 7% from its competitors.
The corporate office has set aside $2 million for direct marketing efforts this year, aside from whatever the individual units kick in. The dollars clearly mark the office’s shift from an operations-based focus to a concentration on marketing.
Davies anticipates that Noble House will send out 1 million direct mail pieces to customers and prospects this year. As recently as 2000 it mailed only 200,000.
The chain is scheduled to introduce Noble Rewards, yet another new effort, to guests this summer. Guests who also are members of Delta Air Lines and American Airlines frequent flyer programs can earn miles on either of those carriers.
While guests are offered a chance to join at check-in, the chain is urging them to sign up for the program on its Web site (www.noblehousehotels.com). To sweeten the pot, guests joining before Sept. 29 will be entered to win an additional 250,000 air miles, as well as a three-night weekend stay at any Noble House property.
There is a method to this madness: Davies believes the promotion will boost the company’s efforts to collect e-mail addresses.
Davies is looking forward to the day when e-mail can comprise a significant portion of the company’s marketing. To date, 30,000 of its 330,000 customer records have e-mail addresses attached. But while he can see the balance tilting toward e-mail, he does not believe it will completely supplant paper mail, at least as far as Noble House is concerned.
“We will want to communicate with [our customers] through the mail. It’s warm, something that has a signature on a nice card. I don’t think we will ever lose sight of that,” Davies says.
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