Pride Hotels & Resorts grows its direct bookings’ revenue 5x with Simplotel

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The Indian Hospitality Chain Sees Direct Bookings Double to 4% of Total Occupancy with Simplotel Hotel E-commerce & Digital Marketing

Pride Group of Hotels is one of the country’s fastest growing hospitality chains. Founded in 1988 by Mr. S.P. Jain with a 111-room property in Pune, Pride Hotels has rapidly gone on to increase its footprint with nearly 62 hotels across India. The chain operates four brands: Pride Plaza Hotels which are luxurious upscale properties in Delhi & Kolkata; Pride Hotels which are upscale properties in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities; Pride Resorts and Pride Biznotel.

Pride Group of Hotels onboarded Simplotel for two reasons: to increase organic traffic on their website, and consequently, drive more direct bookings. Kushal Ranjan, Associate Vice-President at Pride Hotels, says, “We really wanted to leverage Simplotel’s expertise in Google Hotel Ads. The industry spoke highly about Simplotel delivering phenomenal results. We began the partnership with our 24-room property in Gir. We couldn’t believe that within a couple of months our direct bookings through the website outnumbered the number of bookings we received from online travel agencies (OTAs). Simplotel’s Digital Marketing worked so well that our official website was now getting ranked as the first result on Google’s search engine result pages (SERP). Witnessing this outcome, we started onboarding all our remaining properties on to Simplotel Hotel E-commerce.”

Kushal further says, “Simplotel’s Digital Marketing expertise in technical and content search engine optimisation (SEO) boosted our direct bookings remarkably. We could now optimise our pricing strategy and even drive additional revenue through add-ons. Additionally, Simplotel Hotel E-commerce helped our guests to complete their booking journey within three steps. We would hardly get any bookings. These factors motivated us to switch our booking engine and website to Simplotel.”

Pride Hotels had initially considered other providers for the website and booking engine. “We realised that only Simplotel had the technology that was similar to OTAs. Our direct bookings through the website have doubled to 4% of total occupancy across the entire chain. Our revenues have grown 5x. Our entire management was awestruck by these results,” says Kushal.

He adds, “I love Simplotel’s Booking Engine setup. We are able to create offers on the fly, both at the property and chain-level. On other booking engines, we need to select multiple things before we create a plan. Simplotel is so intuitive that once I create a plan, I only need to add items to it.”

Facade of Pride Hotel and Convention Centre Indore

Arsee Parween, Cluster Revenue Manager at Pride Hotels & a member of Kushal’s team, loves the support from Simplotel. “With Simplotel, we feel like we’re partners. Their proactive suggestions and enthusiasm have helped us grow our business phenomenally. They always resolve our queries in a timely manner. Even if I can’t understand the solution on call, the team connects immediately via Google Meet. They seem to have 26 hours in a day.”

Karan Patil, Revenue Manager (North Cluster) at Pride Hotels & also a member of Kushal’s team adds, “For instance, our marketing communications team was able to leverage Simplotel’s suggestions to create new promotions, packages and advertising to upsell our F&B outlets, spa, romantic getaways, et al. This helped us to drive more direct revenue.”

Arsee says, “I believe Simplotel’s USP is that it’s a Google Hotel Ads (GHA) certified partner. You won’t believe but we have got so much traction through GHA that it increased the physical footfall at our hotels tremendously. In July, we recorded our highest organic traffic across the entire chain.”

Kushal loves Simplotel’s analytics. “Once I had to make a report on the fly for a revenue meeting. When I logged into Simplotel’s backend, the data was exactly what I wanted, tailor-made for my presentation.”

In a concluding note, Kushal says, “Embrace resilience and resilience will embrace you. In the crucible of hospitality, endurance is the catalyst for profound personal and professional transformation.”