Background

Mirvac Hotels comprises 42 hotels spanning three countries, ranging from CBD accommodation to tropical resorts. Their target customers encompass both the value conscious and high end in business and leisure markets.

Mirvac Hotels had the same dilemma as any marketing focused, brand aware, multi-venue operation worldwide: generate more with less. How does group marketing offer the ability for individual hotels to respond promptly to regional needs without additional resources while retaining brand control?

Mirvac Hotels needed a better website with better content, more easily found in search engines to create better qualified traffic and generate more bookings, while still encapsulating the emotions associated with travel. 

Client: Mirvac Hotels
Creative Agency: Square Circle Triangle

Objective

Square Circle Triangle’s (SCT) goal was to increase bookings by focusing on two factors: more traffic from search engines and increased user engagement with the website. Both of these factors should in turn result in an increase in booking conversions and an increase in enquiries about hosting functions and events.

In addition SCT planned to give Mirvac Hotels the ability to add content at the hotel level to respond to local needs, while retaining brand and publication control at a higher level.

Strategy

Firstly, we reviewed the available analytics and interrogated the problem. We then sought to understand the client’s resources and how to make best use of those. Finally, we came to understand the potential issues in delivering a client managed website.

Execution

We began by addressing the SEO concerns in design and through our CMS, Blocks. This meant developing Mirvac Hotel’s portal site www.mirvachotels.com.au.

Underneath this, each of the 42 hotels have a fully functioning and editable website promoting the unique nature of their hotel. The editable nature means individual hotels can respond quickly to local demands and occupancy rates. All sites have free text and map search functions that are populated from live data and search based algorithms.

The customer now has a well indexed, easy to use site with powerful text and map based search functions alongside a simple booking engine that integrates live with the hotel’s property management system. The content is tailored, optimised, relevant and fresh.

Increasing booking revenue was addressed in three ways:

• Driving more traffic – primarily through high search engine rankings
• Improving the user experience throughout the site
• Easy and safe booking functionality

The CMS also allows Mirvac Hotels to manage the creation of new websites, email campaigns as well as contact management.

Results

The results have surpassed all expectations, with a massive increase in website traffic and revenues:

• Online bookings revenue up over 300%
• User engagement up 39% for pages/visit and time on site experiencing an over 100% increase.
• Bounce rate 45% below benchmark for hotel sites

Search traffic was identified as a key driver of new business, so the site was designed with this in mind, and all marketing managers responsible for content creation were given SEO training. This has resulted in:

• Search traffic up 161%
• Search traffic from Asia up 130%, Europe 120%, non-branded search traffic up 184% (excluding Mirvacs brand names e.g. Sebel, Citigate, Sea Temple, Como, Quay West)
• Search Traffic on event keywords (conference, wedding, function, event) up over 1000%, and
• Non-branded search traffic 481%. This is an important metric as it excludes Mirvac’s powerful brands, which have always ranked well.