IRVING, TX—In what President/CEO Wayne Goldberg characterized as “a game-changer” for the company, La Quinta Inns & Suites recently launched a new version of its mobile platform dubbed LQ Instant Hold, adding a smartphone app to complement the mobile site.
The free app is designed to further streamline the travel/booking process on the platform.
The company is so confident in the LQ Instant Hold technology as a differentiator for the midscale lodging chain that it has applied for a patent. “For the first time in our industry, La Quinta enables customers who access our mobile site to select a hotel and instantly hold a reservation for four hours. Customers can hold a reservation by simply entering a cell phone number,” said Goldberg in a statement. “La Quinta owns this proprietary technology and we have applied for copyright and patent protection.”
In addition to holding the reservation, the new app offers an interactive map showing La Quinta hotels and enhanced driving directions to the properties; locates restaurants and attractions using Yelp; offers TripAdvisor ratings on the properties; connects to special hotel packages, deals and destination guides; and allows users to redeem La Quinta Returns loyalty program points for gift certificates and cards.
Chief Marketing Officer Julie Cary said the chain’s mobile traffic has grown 19 times since 2008 but noted that most guests don’t book via their mobile phones. “It is not that easy to put a 16-digit credit-card number into a phone and it’s an opportunity…we are tapping into that mobile opportunity with our evolved mobile site and app,” she said.
“This has not been done before; this is unique,” claimed Cary. “With the release, we have three industry ‘firsts’: LQ Instant Hold, user reviews with TripAdvisor and local content around the hotel that’s powered by Yelp.”
The process was in the works for about a year and entailed “a lot” of consumer research “up front to really understand the frustrations of the consumer—how they were using their phones as they relate to hotels, to understand what unmet needs were out there and how we could innovate and come up with ways to solve customers’ problems and drive more hotel revenue in the process,” she said.
Cary sees the initiative helping to sell more hotel rooms for the chain. “One of the things we heard from customers is a lot of times they were en route and they just wanted to know what hotel choices they had in front of them or get the hotel phone numbers. Our goal is to make it easy for the customer and really for us to get the sale, and get it in any way possible that works best for the customer,” she said.
For example, hotel phone numbers are “very prominent” on the mobile site. “We know there’s a group of customers that, no matter what, want to call the property and book directly at the property. So we’ve made that easy on the mobile site,” said Cary.
Similarly, she said with the Instant Hold feature it’s easy to find the hotel because there are step-by-step directions from where [the guest]is and “we think we’ll sell more rooms as a result of it,” she said.
The LQ Instant Hold availability is directly tied to availability in the chain’s NetRez system so properties can control allocation based upon booking patterns.
Cary said the process is “pretty seamless” to the hotel. “Like they allocate rooms today at different price points, they allocate LQ Instant Hold as a price point—it’s called an SRP—and they allocate how many rooms they want for the day and it’s seamless. Then it gets filled up, or if the person doesn’t show up after the four hours, it gets put back into inventory. It’s a four-hour hold or up to midnight. It’s done through our PMS.”
Cary said La Quinta has filed for a patent on the technology, which, if granted, could ostensibly enable the chain to gain revenue if other hotel companies want to have the technology. “You never know,” laughed Cary. “There’s always that potential.”
The CMO acknowledged, “It’s hard to get proprietary things in our industry. In my past experience, uniqueness was critical, so, I said: ‘By golly, I’m going to get something in this business,’ and we’re able to get this as a patented product. We’re excited.”
La Quinta has a formal promotion program to alert consumers to the new technology, including television, radio and online banner advertising, email and direct mail.
Cary sees the mobile technology “definitely growing” over the next couple of years.
“To what degree is anybody’s guess. To how we simplify the site and how that impacts revenue directly, we think it’s going to have pretty significant impact. Mobile’s been up to about 15% of our traffic at LQ.com so we think this is an opportunity to drive more sales at our mobile site and at the property.”