As a business, the hotel has been operating 125 years on the south coast of England in Eastbourne. As a hotel with 82 bedrooms, 2 restaurants, and great facilities such as outdoor grounds with an outdoor swimming pool, we are quite a rarity for a town like Eastbourne. We foster a mature clientele that are very loyal to the business and like to come for leisure breaks as well as non-resident dining and afternoon teas in particular.

In my role specifically, I run the marketing function as a Marketing Consultant. So my specific objective is to generate direct business for the hotel, whether that be through direct reservations to the business, or as in the case of VoucherCart, setting gift voucher experiences direct to the clientele.

The growth has been significant. From starting back six years ago, we’ve seen a growth of 175% in terms of sales volume coming from a mixture of avenues. For instance, using the VoucherCart microsite to promote the vouchers, introducing a greater variety of vouchers and having an understanding of what sells.

With that in mind, we’ve also done tactical promotions. So at times of sales periods like Black Friday or Christmas or even Mothering Sunday, we’d look at doing promotional activity and using the VoucherCart system to push or promote certain offerings, or instate flexi pricing for a limited time frame.

So I made the recommendation as I had been using VoucherCart at another hotel which is still a customer of VoucherCart. In my experience the online platform was very good in terms of having functionality such as being able to make a purchase but set a delivery date, for example, on someone’s birthday. There’s also a range of templated designs that could be used for digital distribution, and very importantly for an independent hotel like the Hydro, we are paid at the time of purchase.

I think we use the VoucherCart platform twofold. One is to issue and redeem vouchers, and that’s primarily used on the shop floor by the reception, lounge, conservatory, restaurant, and hair salon teams. Afternoon tea is a popular one too. Every 15 or 20 minutes they’re going down there to get the vouchers redeemed.

From the sort of top level, which is more the senior team, we’re more interested in looking at the value of each voucher sale every fortnight where we will try to see where we are year to date, year on year etc.

I think the other thing we look at as a qualifying KPI is the numbers of vouchers sold to indicate perception of service provided. As long as we are increasing our voucher sales in our conservatory, our restaurant, and across the hotel, it shows that there is a faith in the service that we’re delivering. That people are still seeing it as a gift for people linked to the price per head. We want to make sure that when times are hard, we’re giving a service that’s good value for money.

I do a lot of sales analysis in terms of direct reservations and naturally, gift voucher sales. One thing that I would say that is really positive for us is that if we do a sale, for example, a Black Friday 20% off, the average purchase price doubles. Additionally, my redemption rate will decrease. By that I mean a voucher’s purchased, but there’s a greater chance that the recipient will not redeem it, so therefore it’s more profit.

So despite the headline being a discounted voucher, we get greater sales volume, we get a greater average purchase price, and we get greater non-redemption. So therefore we generate greater profit.

I think that the beauty of VoucherCart is that it’s very simple. The voucher’s either been redeemed or it hasn’t. It’s either expired or it hasn’t. And I think the traceability on the usage of the voucher, certainly if it’s a monetary one and it decreases every time we use it, is a great tool for the floor staff.

I like the simplicity of reporting. I always do a monthly report in terms of what sold, volume, average price, cash value, unredeemed vouchers, live vouchers that are yet to be redeemed. That works well for me.

I also like the fact that it’s linked in with Google Analytics which enables me to understand customer trends in more detail such as device, location, number of users, sessions, etc. That’s really useful.

And I would also say the simplicity of discounts has greatly improved in the last couple of years. So being able to set a promotion up whereby for example, I can set a sale date. So, I could set week one in May. I can set a redemption date to suit. And I can also set my discount or promotional price alongside whether it is a blanket promotion or it’s for a specific amount of vouchers to be sold. So the flexibility there from a marketing point of view, enables me to set it up.

Additionally, if I need support I’ll use your chat function to enable your team who have helped me several times with the hotels that I work with to provide insight and also correct anything that may need addressing.

The thing I like is that it’s instant updating and you can create a voucher, and it doesn’t take that long to go live. So, you know, that’s been useful when we’ve been updating websites and things and Stephen’s updating all the vouchers. If we suddenly turn around and say, actually, you know what, we want to push the tea vouchers at this price, Steven can go in there quite quickly, and it’s fairly instantaneous in terms of when you see it on our website, as opposed to waiting for it to go through a checking facility then find out it’s 24 hours before it goes live and things like that. And I think whilst we don’t use it enough, and I hold my hands up to that, I think the ability to schedule promotions to link to social media accounts is very good. I think as hoteliers, it’s finding that person responsible who can think it’s “Chocolate Week” or “Afternoon Tea Week” and then giving them the rights to link a voucher to a particular day or week’s significance. It’s very easy to do that.

In terms of volume and revenue, it is actually afternoon tea. Despite it being a relatively lower price voucher, it scales up. The SEO on that has really progressed. And we’re picking up a lot of traffic from people that either know the Hydro or are searching generic Eastbourne search terms. So that for sure. However, the interesting one here for me is that the high value vouchers are increasing when I do a sale. So if we do a promotional piece of activity, I will sell much higher vouchers and I’m talking £800, £1000.

Absolutely. I already have done. I’ve several times recommended VoucherCart to other hotels in particular for their offering and will continue to do so assuming obviously the offering continues to be as good as it is and progress going forward.