Oban Hotel Delighted with Online Booking Service

When the Kelvin Hotel in Oban redesigned their website in 2009 they recognised the importance of improving the visual appeal of the site, in addition to managing the keywords and meta tags to ensure that they improved the ranking of their website in Search Engine results.

Once this project was completed, the next step in the development of the Kelvin’s online strategy was the selection of a booking engine for the website. Kelvin Hotel owner, Sheena McLean picks up the story, “We did some research on the web and identified a number of potential companies to work with, including Bookassist. We also recognised the increase in online bookings over recent years had raised the expectation of our guests and it was no longer acceptable to ask them to email an enquiry to us. We were also concerned about losing bookings from customers and wanted to offer them the option to book online at our own website”

One of the key requirements of the Kelvin Hotel was a speedy implementation, the contract had been agreed in early June 2009 and the plan was to maximise any last minute summer bookings as well as realising the potential for advance bookings in the normally quieter “shoulder months” of October – March.

Bookassist were able to conclude the website integration and staff training over email and telephone in the week or so that followed. This was of real benefit to the Kelvin Hotel as Manager Lewis Ross explains, “We are a relatively small (but busy) hotel and as such the staff tend to cover many roles within the hotel and we don’t have much spare time to dedicate to new projects. However Bookassist were great, as part of integration all we had to do was complete a simple data capture form, email it to them and they loaded all of this into the system for us. Next we did some telephone training which was less than 30 minutes and was very easy to follow.

Once the training was completed, Bookassist worked with our Web Developers to launch the booking engine on our website, leaving us to concentrate on managing the hotel. Within a matter of days we had started to receive bookings which have gone from strength to strength throughout July”

The implementation of the Kelvin Hotel is very typical of the way in which Bookassist Scotland operate, as Business Development Manager, James Kennedy confirms, “We specialise in providing Online Sales & Marketing Solutions for hospitality businesses and as such we really understand the challenges that these businesses face, particularly the time pressures they are under. This enables us to build the integration timetable around the hotel needs, allowing them to continue running their business whilst we co-ordinate the Web Developers and the staff training”

James Kennedy will be visiting Oban from the 4th – 6th August and is happy to meet with interested businesses at their premises. To make an appointment please email james.kennedy@bookassist.com or contact the office on 01292-521-404.