How Edgewood Tahoe increased booked revenue by 83%
About Edgewood Tahoe
Nestled at the water's edge on Lake Tahoe's south shore, Edgewood Tahoe is a cherished gathering place where guests enjoy the scenic natural beauty and genuine hospitality. Edgewood has been a world-class destination for golf, dining, weddings, and special events since 1968. In June 2017, The Lodge at Edgewood Tahoe opened to be the premier luxury lodging destination in Lake Tahoe. The Lodge was voted the #1 Resort Hotel in the US by readers of Travel + Leisure in the World's Best Awards in 2021 and selected as Hotel of the Year for USA & Canada by Preferred Hotels & Resorts in 2019. And in 2022, they added 14 luxury Villa Suites to the property.
Edgewood Tahoe's challenge
Before implementing Revinate, Edgewood Tahoe faced significant challenges in lead management and guest engagement. Without a platform to manage leads and route and track calls, reservations agents predominantly took inbound bookings. They fielded basic inquiries, leading to missed follow-up and conversion opportunities. Additionally, the lack of a streamlined reservations platform and contact center hindered the team's ability to staff efficiently, especially during emergencies like COVID-19 and wildfires. As a result, the hotel struggled to maintain service quality and revenue continuity. Finally, the lack of a hotel CRM meant that the hotel was unable to use captured data to enhance the guest experience, engage guests throughout the guest journey, and drive additional revenue. Overall, the hotel's potential for growth and guest satisfaction was limited due to the lack of technology to manage reservations and guest marketing.
How Revinate Marketing drove millions in lifetime revenue
When the decision was made to tackle these challenges head-on, the team selected Revinate to empower the reservations and marketing teams to transform how they worked, with the goal of driving revenue and better guest experiences. When Executive Director of Marketing & Sales Siobhan Fajayan joined the company, Revinate Marketing was already in place, allowing her to immediately jump in and execute one-time and automated email campaigns. Leveraging Revinate's built-in segmentation features, she can reach the right audience at the right time.
Siobhan creates newsletters and targeted one-time campaigns to inspire guests to visit. One geo-targeted email, for example, was sent to locals within 60 miles of the property, promoting 'Locals Day at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course.' Another top-performing one-time campaign promoted the opening of the golf season and the newly remodeled bar and deck. This single campaign drove over $465,000 in direct revenue for the property, proving the value of email marketing.
In addition to one-time campaigns, one of the property's most successful campaigns is the automated cart abandonment campaign. Guests receive a personalized drip email, encouraging them to book just one minute after abandoning the booking engine and again two days later. This 'always-on' campaign has driven over $877,000 in direct bookings over 19 months, with each email driving an average of $311 in direct revenue for the property.
To date, Edgewood Tahoe has driven $5.7M in lifetime revenue from their marketing campaigns.
How Reservation Sales and RezForce turned calls into revenue
The hotel added Reservation Sales and RezForce to ensure that the department was always staffed, even during emergencies or power outages, which can happen during large storms. Reservations Manager Lana Venter says, 'I'm forever grateful to my predecessor for selecting Revinate. I was gifted a great foundation that I have been able to continue building upon.'
RezForce ensures that the hotel doesn't miss out on revenue opportunities by providing after-hours and overflow support. Lana is quick to point out that the quality of the agents is exceptional, saying, 'We are Forbes rated and go through regular assessments to maintain our rating. Our RezForce agents have no issues when audited because the quality is so high.'
Historically, hiring reservation sales agents presented challenges, primarily due to the location's limited talent pool. With Reservation Sales in place, Lana was able to extend the hiring reach beyond the local area and explore remote work options for the first time. This shift made the team more selective, prioritizing experience and high-quality agents that could bring immediate value. Lana says, 'Hiring remote agents has had a profound impact on both staff retention and our overall success.'
Lead management is one of the biggest benefits for the reservations team. With Reservation Sales, the team now captures and tracks a broader range of leads, including inquiries about amenities and special requests. This shift has enabled agents to follow up on potential bookings more effectively, ensuring no opportunity is overlooked. By treating every guest inquiry as a potential lead, the team has seen a 56% improvement in conversion rates, contributing to increased revenue. The team is also able to do far more outbound than ever before. With the platform's reporting capabilities, they can implement an incentive program for agents, which has been very successful. Lana says, 'It was like a switch. As soon as we offered incentives, outbound numbers jumped significantly, and agents jumped on the leads, dramatically improving our response time.' The team improved their outbound revenue by 98% compared to the previous year.
Revinate's call recording and scoring features have also been invaluable for coaching and training the Reservations team. By reviewing calls, management can identify areas where agents excel and where they need improvement. This real-time feedback loop not only helps in correcting mistakes but also fosters a culture of continuous learning. Incorporating performance metrics into the team's incentives has encouraged agents to engage more effectively with callers, leading to improved customer interactions and higher satisfaction rates.
Revinate has facilitated a seamless integration between marketing and reservation sales, allowing the two teams to work collaboratively towards common goals. This cohesive approach has not only enhanced operational efficiency but also contributed to a more consistent and memorable guest experience.
Key performance highlights:
Lifetime revenue: $5.7M in lifetime revenue from Revinate Marketing campaigns
Outbound revenue: 98% improvement in outbound revenue with Reservation Sales
Inbound call conversion: 56% improvement in inbound call conversion with Reservation Sales
About Revinate
Revinate is a direct booking platform that leads the hospitality industry in driving direct revenue and increased profitability.
Our products and our people combine to give hoteliers the superpowers they need to crush their goals. With Revinate, hoteliers shift share away from OTAs and drive tangible results across an individual property or a portfolio. Our industry-leading, AI-powered customer data platform collects, unifies, and synthesizes data to give hoteliers a foundational advantage.
Hoteliers gain critical intelligence — guest lifetime spend, stay preferences, ancillary revenue, and more. With Revinate's Rich Guest Profiles™ data, hoteliers don't need to guess who their most profitable guests are or struggle to drive conversions across email, voice, messaging, and digital channels.
Revinate's direct booking platform and omnichannel communication technology powers 950+ million Rich Guest Profiles across 12,500+ hotels to drive over $17.2 billion in direct revenue.
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Shannon Knapp – 00:05:29: I think, and I'm certainly not going to share anything that is probably earth-shattering here, but luxury has changed so significantly over the last, let's call it 20, 25 years. I think in the past, especially on the hospitality side, the hotel side, the hotels almost used to dictate what luxury was. We define the standards of luxury, and we told that to the consumer, and we demonstrated that in the experience to the consumer. But what has evolved and changed so significantly, is that luxury now is such a personal experience. It really is about what is important to me as a traveler, as a person, and what is luxury to me might be completely not luxury to you. And I think that that is both a challenge and an opportunity in our business. I mean, we certainly see this reflected in the guests that stay with leading hotels. 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And it enables the guests to have an elevated stay experience with benefits and amenities, including pre-arrival upgrade, complimentary breakfast, the ability to earn points to redeem later for stays. And what's interesting or unique about our program is that you earn those benefits from day one. So you don't have to go through a tier before you get some of these, for example, complimentary breakfast or upgrades. Those come day one with your membership with Leaders Club. Karen Stephens – 00:12:53: That's wonderful. And are you also leveraging personalization within Leaders Club? So making sure that whatever the guest is telling you, you can then transmit to other hotels. How does that work? Shannon Knapp – 00:13:03: There's quite a world of GDPR and PII and all those things that we have to obviously be very conscious of and very careful with the data of our guests. And we are different than your traditional fully branded hotels like Marriott or Hilton's, and that we don't own operate or franchise our hotels. So the data of our hotels is actually uniquely the data of our hotels. However, as Leaders Club, the program, if you sign up as a Leaders Club program, and you choose to share with us your preferences and you choose to say that you're happy to have those preferences shared across your stay experiences, we absolutely do and are able to share that information with our hotels, whether that's something as simple as your arrival time. So you can hope that your room would be prepared for your arrival to your preference in the type of location of your room or the type of amenities you enjoy. So when the guests chooses us to provide that, and they're comfortable with us sharing that, we do share that with our hotels around the world. Karen Stephens – 00:14:03: That's wonderful. You know, one thing that we've always talked about with personalization, or if you're asking for guest information, is that you use it properly, obviously, but then you do actually use it. So if somebody tells you in one hotel, you know, I want to be facing whatever, the courtyard, you want to make sure that the next hotel gets that information. So that's great. You're able to tie it together with the loyalty program. So shifting gears a little bit, it is that time of year, we are heading into the budget season. And so I'm sure as the world's leading hotels, you probably give a lot of advice and help hotels as they move through it. But generally, what kind of advice do you give during this period? Why do they think about their financial planning, their marketing budgets, their tech stack? How do you advise the hotels in that regard? Shannon Knapp – 00:14:46: It's such an interesting time. I do think that it has really stimulated a different approach and a different take on the annual budgeting process now. What we try, and when we speak to our hotels, and we are strategic business partners for our hotels, we are there to help ensure that they're maximizing the revenue that comes to them through all channels. So we work with them on their budgeting strategy from a revenue perspective, as well as their distribution strategy. How will they achieve that outcome? And what we're seeing a lot of these days is a shift in mix. So leisure, obviously, it kind of took off in 2021, 2022, and has really become a major part of the mix of a lot of our hotels, so much so that some of our hotels who were historically maybe more of a balanced mix of corporate, and group, and leisure, are now really leaning very heavily on the leisure business, and maybe reducing the amount of corporate business they have or the amount of group business that they're pursuing. 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You know, every day I get probably 50 emails from various vendors of data technology. They're all great, I'm sure. But what is the problem that I'm trying to solve as a hotelier from my hotel? Really be clear on what the use cases are. Don't be distracted by the next shiny object coming through. And make sure that you have somebody on property who can actually manage that vendor. And if you can't, work with us because we can help you with that. Because having the greatest technology platform that no one on property understands means you're not maximizing the value. It means you're wasting money and resources. Karen Stephens – 00:17:19: Oh my gosh, truer words were never spoken. You know, we had our own conference this spring in Miami, and our CEO got up on stage, and he showed a picture of a utility closet, you know, in a hotel with all the wires and hanging out. It's like, here's where technology goes to die. And I think you hit it on the head. All these platforms, they don't speak to each other, and nobody's managing it. And so somebody thought it was a good idea, but I think that truer words were never spoken. Making sure that everything could be integrated, you can have access to the data, and someone's managing it. Shannon Knapp – 00:17:50: Exactly. And I mean, think about it from an independent hotel's perspective. If you're a small hotel in the middle of the Swiss Alps, maybe you have a team of 10 folks on property between sales, marketing, and distribution. It's hard to expect that somebody on property is going to have the experience, the knowledge, the time to be able to manage this increasing collection of technology providers, especially when they don't speak to each other, especially when what they sold you is not necessarily what has been implemented. So it's really important. And this is a role that has become increasingly important for leading over the last several years is consulting with our members first. As I mentioned, don't get distracted, understand the problems you're trying to solve, but also then how are you maximizing the tools that you have? You don't need anything new. You actually have a great setup here. You have a great tech stack. How are you using it? And how can we help you do that? Karen Stephens – 00:18:42: Absolutely. And I can just say from the vendor side, when we went through the partnership with Leading Hotels of the World, your team stepped in to do all of the technical due diligence. It was not a one-and-done. There were many competitors in that boat. So I just want to give a shout out. I think, again, if you're an independent hotel, for you to do that kind of diligence is difficult. So to be able to kind of look to Leading and say, 'Okay, this vendor works or doesn't', I think is important. Shannon Knapp – 00:19:07: Yeah, thanks, Karen. It is something, like I mentioned, it's a newish, certainly not a newish capability for us. We've had a very strong tech team for many years, but in terms of turning to the hotel operations side, and really helping to be a partner for our members in identifying their needs, finding the right partners, the right vendors to meet those needs, because the needs of smaller hotels, independent hotels are very different from those of larger hotels or hotels that are part of chain brands. So really understanding what the distinct needs of these members are and then helping to make sure that they're getting the best business terms, the best commercial terms, best service terms, as well as obviously world-class technology solutions. So, I mean, we're proud that we're able to help in that way. And the demand for that is ever-increasing. Karen Stephens – 00:19:51: It really is because, my goodness, to your point, to wrap your brain around the speed at which all of the things are coming out now is a lot. And so to be able to leverage kind of the experience of a central team, to be part of an association where you've got other hotels, you can leverage that knowledge and have something centrally driving it, it's really exciting. So speaking of kind of global brand presence for a hotelier, what one piece of advice would you offer to hoteliers that are looking to increase their brand's global presence and customer experience in the digital age? Is there anything that comes to mind? Shannon Knapp – 00:20:25: I think it comes down to really having a good understanding of your business, your growth aspirations, and trying to, in all seriousness, maximize the partners that are available to you. Because I would say, and it's truer than ever, as much as I think there are a ton of capabilities that enable, that may sell themselves as, 'Hey, you can do this all yourself', I think that that is a really tall order for any independent or smaller operator to figure out how to elevate your brand, how to define your distribution across literally, thousands of channels globally to manage your operations, to deliver a great guest experience, to manage your loyal guests. The task is taller than it has ever been for hotel operators. And I think the best advice that I could offer is to stay maniacally focused on what you are trying to achieve from a business outcomes perspective, from a guest experience perspective, and put your resources on the things that matter in driving those outcomes. Karen Stephens – 00:21:33: I love that. That's great advice. Okay, so Shannon, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you this question. So for women aspiring to reach top leadership positions, what tips do you have based on your own career journey? Moving from a marketing leadership position to the top job, what helped you make that transition? Shannon Knapp – 00:21:51: I would say the most important thing across my entire career has been the support and advocacy of mentors. I have had three mentors across my career that have really invested in me and have helped me, and they've challenged me. They have helped me refine what my career aspirations were, and they really invested in my success. And that's something that I think as a rare female leader in this industry, is something that I love to kind of pay it back or pay it forward, however you want to look at it. But it's something that I think is really important for those of us that are in this industry to be able to not only model behavior for future leaders, but also to take the time to mentor and be a support so we can help bring more women into the leadership positions in hospitality in particular. I would say the other thing that I did that maybe at the time I wasn't as conscious about, but I think has been a really important part of my ability to continue to progress in my career is I never charted too narrow a course for my career. I was very comfortable taking lateral moves. I was very comfortable going into areas that I perhaps, that maybe it first didn't appeal to me or I wasn't aware of. And what all of that did was help me really understand and refine over time what I liked, what I was good at, what I didn't like, what I wasn't good at. And all of that helped kind of refine my path as I went along in my career. And I think that that's a really important, especially as I kind of look at our younger workers these days, is to be okay with having a broader scope of experience. Because ultimately that is where I had the greatest learnings. I got to work with different customer types. I got to work in different functions. I got to work with different types of products. And all of that contributed to my knowledge base that I think was really important for me as I moved from being a functional expert in marketing to really taking on the CEO role. I was able to draw on a really diverse background and experience. Karen Stephens – 00:23:59: I love that. And I love the shout-out to mentors as well. I think it's so important to be able to have trusted advisors because I think as we grow in our careers, we gain more and more confidence and to be able to help younger people get some confidence and try and fail and it's okay. Shannon Knapp – 00:24:16: Yeah, failure is an amazing thing, actually. Some of my best lessons, bar none, have been as a result, not of successes, but actually of failures. Karen Stephens – 00:24:23: Failure and learning. Oh, I love that. Shannon, it's been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much. My guest has been Shannon Knapp, who is the president and CEO of Leading Hotels of the World. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Shannon Knapp – 00:24:34: Thank you so much, Karen. Karen Stephens – 00:24:40: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hotel Moment by Revinate. Our community of hoteliers is growing every week, and each guest we speak to is tackling industry challenges with the innovation and flexibility that our industry demands. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you're listening on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe for more content. For more information, head to Until next time, keep innovating. View source
