THE WOODLANDS, TX—People like to receive gift certificates, whether it’s for a bottle of Champagne, a dinner, a day at the spa or even a hotel stay. And, in the digital world, sending them is even easier. For its newest guest service, as well as branding and marketing campaign, Benchmark Hospitality International has introduced digital gift giving—and the company has big plans for expansion of the program.
Lisa Stice, VP, global online marketing for the company, noted that the traditional method of printing out gift certificates worked, but “gift giving that can be done instantaneously is opening up doors to many more possibilities.”
So how does it work? Benchmark teamed up with eGiftify, an e-commerce technology company, for its white-labeled eGift solution. Target users of the program include both locals, who might come for dinner or a day at the spa, and guests. Gift givers can send a certificate via a computer, tablet or phone, using text, e-mail and Facebook. Or, if the recipient isn’t particularly tech-savvy, they can print out the card instead. Gift givers can also choose to send it instantaneously or schedule it for a later date.
Stice noted that versatility was key. “What’s nice about the technology side is givers are notified when recipients opens then, when they receive them and when they redeem them,” she said. The recipient is given the option of sending a thank you note in return.
“Recipients are also reminded in case they forget they received a gift,” she explained. “Every so many months, they’ll get another reminder. That kind of technology that’s automated and which we don’t have to worry about initiating—it does the job for us—is very valuable in keeping this kind of program flourishing. The other thing we want to do moving forward is put a feature in our on-property app, where the gift certificate can fall right in their wallet.”
In addition to their own devices, guests can use on-property tablets to send a gift. Each participating property set up stations in areas like the lobby, spa and bar. “We were surprised how many people wanted to gift when they’re right at the property,” said Stice. “That activity is already taking off with golf and different kinds of gifting. Believe it or not, people will be sitting across the room, see someone they know and send an instant text with a bottle of wine or $10 to buy a drink.
“In our marketing moving forward, we will encourage more of that,” continued Stice. “Our first phase was to get the program up and running for the Christmas holidays, but we have a lot of micro marketing we want to do in that respect within the outlets, overall at the hotel and companywide as a brand. There’s also lots of bigger picture conversations about doing some brand launches with rewarding our customers with gift certificates that can also be transferable if they like, and some contests to win some gift cards coming in the future.”
The gift cards themselves are customizable. Gift givers can choose from an array of eGift cards for occasions like an anniversary or birthday, or to say thank you, among others. “We’ve designed a whole series of different kinds of greetings that the giver can choose from,” said Stice.
The executive elaborated on how this program is much more than just a nice amenity to provide to guests. “We were very excited about the fact that it has a lot of tools that can be used to spread the word about a gift being given. For instance, how it can be shared on a recipient’s Facebook page, where friends can see,” she said. “Additionally, there’s a lot of marketing opportunity. We can put together a database of everybody that has ever purchased or received a gift and send out reminders that it’s Mother’s Day or a special holiday. We can also do a birthday program where we can send out a gift certificate to all of our givers saying happy birthday, thanks for sending gifts, here’s one for you. There are a lot of marketing opportunities like that we are planning to launch this year.”
Stice noted that those are brand-wide solutions, but individual hotels are also looking at similar promotions. For example, one hotel ran a promotion for Valentine’s Day in which anyone who gave a $300 gift card received a free night’s stay. “We sold around 30 of them in that short window of time leading up to Valentine’s Day. We had quite a few of the givers already redeem their one night stay,” noted Stice. “There’s a lot of opportunity for us to reach new audiences. We didn’t know the recipient, but now we can communicate with that person and convert him or her into a potential new customer that would stay with us in the future.”
The program also helps build future marketing campaigns. “There’s a really great back-end accounting tool,” said Stice. “The hotel teams can log in and see all of the activity that happens with the purchase and the redemption. They can also check by where the gift cards were purchased, sold or redeemed. They can see how much was redeemed in the spa, how much was redeemed at the restaurant vs. the front desk for the stay. It gives us a lot of good data back to work with and to learn how to reshape new marketing promotions and better tools in the future for managing it.”
Currently 14 hotels in the Benchmark Resorts & Hotels and Personal Luxury Resorts & Hotels brands participate, but more are being on-boarded. Thus far, said Stice, the program has been successful. “What I’ve seen off the bat is the hotels that communicated it well and advertised within the hotel, on their websites, had some big returns,” she said. “We’re learning from that as well about how to get it in front of the customer because if we get it in front of them, we’re already seeing they will buy. And, the promotions really seem to take off well. We had three hotels that ran promotions and they profited the most out of all the sales that happened in these first few weeks.”
And, she said, there are plans to expand the program further. “One of the next phases we’ll do is provide instant gifting for events,” she said, noting that guests have inquired about it for hotel events like a New Year’s Eve package, breakfast with Santa or a wine-tasting dinner. “We’re even looking at dynamic package gifting next year where we can actually gift the offers we’re selling through our online booking engine. The other thing we’re thinking of doing with it next year as well is doing a registry for newlyweds.
“There’s a lot of great conversation underway,” said Stice. “We already saw right off the bat with just the initial launch, and it’s only been since the first week of December that we’ve already sold over 100,000 gifts. We see huge opportunity for this.”