Several thousand francs turnover with existing hotel guests – Marketing Automation Case

Our customer Riva Rooms & Studios is an automated smart hotel in Locarno. With the help of Aivie, they are now also able to attract guests in a timely manner. By successfully setting up an automated newsletter campaign, bookings of several thousand francs have already been achieved by existing guests. This is despite 2024 being a very difficult year for Ticino. Aivie also proved its worth when the storms led to a large number of cancellations and prevented the worst from happening.

The Riva Rooms and Studio Hotel Case in figures

Thanks to a well thought-out strategy and the use of marketing automation with Aivie, Riva Rooms and Studios has managed to build a fully automated sales funnel that automatically encourages existing guests to book again.

What has been a sense of achievement with Aivie?

More and more guests are now coming back, and through the e-mail campaign we are actively encouraging guests to come back for the first time and they are increasingly taking advantage of this opportunity.

We have already recorded 8 new bookings from returning guests at the start of the season and our target is 20 by the end of the year. I think we are doing quite well so far.

What does the Hotel Riva Rooms and Studios do?

We are an automated, 24/7 smart hotel located in Minusio. It is located directly on Lake Maggiore and only 5 minutes by car from the beautiful city of Locarno.

Our hotel has been in existence since 1975 and was completely renovated in 2021. We offer modern and elegant accommodation at an affordable price. A small but fine selection of different hotel room types leaves nothing to be desired and offers space for up to 6 people.

The online check-in/out system and the hotel’s own rental car ensure contemporary comfort. The rooms meet a high quality standard and are still very affordable compared to the competition.

Many of our guests decide spontaneously to visit us in Ticino depending on the weather. They are also tempted to book one of our wide range of rooms. We offer rooms for individuals and couples as well as connecting rooms for families.

What did you want to change?

Adrian Schimpf, the Managing Director of Aivie, spent a month at our hotel last summer and was fascinated by our offering. He also spoke to us on several occasions about the potential opportunities for using marketing automation effectively.

Initially, we were somewhat critical of the whole thing. The serious factors for our doubts were mainly made up of:

• How much time will it take?
• How long will it take before we know how to use the tool decisively?
• And will it actually achieve the desired effect?

We were aware that it could also have huge added value. So, after a very informative discussion with Adrian, we agreed to choose Aivie’s full-service solution. It was a match.

With the service done for you by Aivie, we no longer have to spend time taking care of the newsletter campaign. The campaign was completely set up for us by the Aivie team.

In our opinion, this is an important step towards the future and full automation of our hotel.

Why did you choose Aivie?

“One important reason was that Aivie was responsible for designing and working with the tool. We were so convinced by Adrian and his vision that this was enough to start the project.”

Yannis Dörig, rivarooms.com

What did you want to achieve?

The basic aim of the newsletter campaign was to ensure more bookings from returning guests and, ideally, to make their stay with us longer.

We also wanted to further expand the visibility and personal branding of our online presence. We are currently also tackling this goal with Google Ads, but not via Aivie.

What was important to you?

It was particularly important to us that the marketing automation solution was not too intrusive. We don’t want to put our guests off with an intrusive call to action.

So the Aivie team decided not to implement a pop-up message on the website as usual, but to collect the leads in the old-fashioned way via a form that they placed on the website. This way, the newsletter effectively only reaches qualified leads.

It was also important to us that the newsletter explicitly refers to our contemporary offers.

What changes have been initiated?

Mails are now sent out every month with little effort. However, not much has changed for us, we only had a little extra work and successful results were achieved. From the second year onwards, however, the whole thing runs automatically, which is great!

Approach

As already mentioned, Aivie has set up a newsletter campaign for us, which sends a monthly e-mail to our guests.

The emails to feed the campaign come from existing guests and through the website, on which we have placed a form to sign up for the newsletter.

As a goodie to make the newsletter appealing to potential guests, we give subscribers an exclusive discount on their next booking with us. This makes their booking cheaper and gives us the advantage that they are not booking via an external booking portal such as booking.com. If they book through an external booking portal, we have to pass on between 12% and 18% of the total amount to them.

At the same time, we enjoy the advantage that if our guests subscribe to the newsletter, we can maintain the customer relationship and thus encourage them to return in the future.

The mails are set up entirely by the Aivie team. We don’t have to do anything other than provide input and reviews. Aivie does all the set-up work in the first year and from the second year onwards, everything runs automatically.

Three important milestones

1. The data of previous guests is used and they are addressed in a personalized way
2. Regular e-mails are sent and processes are standardized and automated.
3. Guests are automatically accompanied during their stay. To improve the experience and the guest lifetime value. For example, by extending the stay or booking a rental car (not yet implemented).

What did you like about the process?

The whole process went very smoothly because, as I said, we didn’t really have much to do with it.

If we had any questions about the tool, there was always someone to talk to and we were always helped quickly. There are also lots of tutorials on the website to help with any questions.

I have to say that we are very happy that Aivie offers us a full service in the first year, as the tool can be very demanding at the beginning without the necessary know-how. However, if you have someone on hand and use it regularly, it runs smoothly over time.

What surprised you?

When we started with email marketing, we assumed that we would receive more bookings.

When the severe storms happened, we were surprised at how badly our tourism was affected by the negative media coverage following the storm in Ticino. Thanks to Aivie, however, we were able to respond quickly and directly by showing our guests by email that the situation on the ground was not as bad as it was made out to be.

With a humorous message and positive pictures, we were able to prevent a lot of cancellations. Without Aivie, we would have been completely at the mercy of negative reporting.

“Due to the storms, we received a large number of cancelations. Thanks to Aivie, we were able to react quickly and convince our future guests to come anyway.”

Sebastian Fritzsche, rivarooms.com

The project was accompanied by Adrian Schimpf

“I saw the collaboration with Riva Rooms & Studios as a very interesting challenge. The hotel industry is in a very challenging environment, where the big platforms are taking up a lot of space and flexing their muscles. I am glad that they are now making more of their customer data and can therefore count on returning guests in the long term.

I have grown very fond of the hotel and the staff over the last few years. I would like to thank them for the good cooperation, wish them continued success and look forward to working with them in the future.”

Adrian Schimpf,
CEO and founder of Aivie.

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