Success story: Lindeth Howe Hotel

This luxury, country house hotel, nestled in the countryside and overlooking Lake Windermere, is set in a traditional 1870s mansion once owned by children’s author Beatrix Potter.

The 4-star hotel has 52 rooms, indoor swimming pool, and a newly refurbished restaurant and bar.

The hotel was keen to have a robust support function in place (that had more than one person on support) from their new system supplier, who would assist them in the transition of systems and beyond. They wanted reassurance if they ever needed help or had any issues, they could call someone in the UK during hotel working hours.

The hotel required a fully integrated system with automated processes that would help them become more efficient and drive additional revenue. They didn’t want disparate systems from multiple suppliers.

It was also essential that the new system interfaced to Classic British Hotels.

Increased occupancy

Since the system has been installed, occupancy has increased by over 11% year-on-year. The team boost room sales by creating promotions that can go live immediately and accessing more channels. There is more flexibility to open and close channels depending on performance. As the systems operate in real time, the hotel can sell down to the last available room and not have to close out early through the fear of overbooking.

Higher revenue

As a result of increased sales and upsells, the hotel generates on average 22% more room revenue than previously.

Time savings

They now only need to update their rates once as the system automatically distributes them across all online channels. To tweak and flex their rates is an easy and swift process. Prior to installing Guestline solutions, they used to manually update their rate card on 13 separate channels, including Rate Tiger which took 1-2 hours per day..

Saved resources

The system enables them to be more efficient. They now have a team who can spend more time with their guests, dealing with new arrivals and upselling.

Streamlined operations

It now only takes 5 minutes to take a booking, process the deposit payment and send out a booking confirmation. By using the email templates, guest confirmation emails are sent out automatically once a booking has been made.

New packages can be created in less than 5 minutes, a marked improvement than before. These packages help drive revenue and added value.

PCI compliant

The hotel no longer stores credit card details on site and can take advanced payments safely and securely, both online and over the phone.

Accessibility

As the systems are cloud hosted, the team can access the systems on any device on or off site. This is very helpful to the General Manager who constantly monitors and reports. As they no longer operate on a local server, they have no hardware issues.

Reports

The team benefit from having access to actual and forecast reports which helps them plan and budget ahead. It helps them analyse sales so they can be alerted when there are fluctuations in bookings and watch out for black spots to fill.

Multi-functional and well supported

The systems are continually updated with new features so the team feel they learn something new every day, including short cuts and quicker ways of doing tasks. The Support Team are skilled in showing the team new processes or quicker methods of working. The hotel sees them as experts in the system who share best practice and help them with queries.

Access Guestline’s account manager is knowledgeable and always also on hand to assist with advice and to help with any further requirements they may have.

Fully integrated to Classic British Hotels

All bookings for Lindeth Howe from Classic British are transferred automatically into their PMS.

One supplier

As the systems are fully integrated and updated in real-time, they all work seamlessly together. The EPoS system fully integrates with the PMS so all sales are easily transferred to a guests accounts. By having one supplier, they have a single contact who is fully accountable for all processes.