Jurys Inn and Leonardo Hotels UK and Ireland provide superb customer service in their hotels and spas. Always looking to give a little extra to customers, three months before the Covid-19 pandemic hit they adopted Reward-It’s gift cards system. These gift cards increased business resilience when the UK’s hospitality industry was shut down, and has since opened new markets.
Customer benefits at a glance:
- Dramatically reduces TCO (total cost of ownership), increasing profitability
- Increases processing ease and speed through automation
- Gift card term and value adjustments can be applied to individual cards, reducing replacements
- Modular software provides bespoke functionality at a much lower cost than developing alternatives
- Has the flexibility to support long-term business development and market changes
- Eliminates temp recruitment for pre-Christmas gift card admin
- Collates, processes and presents real-time business intelligence on customer behaviour
- Improves security
- High-quality branded gift card appearance and longevity
- Provides gift card sales and redemption transparency
- Reduces business risk by increasing business cash flow agility
- Reduces the cost and reliance of postage services to nil, saving multiple £000’s per year
- E-gift card functionality enabled Christmas gifts to be sent to circa 3,000 staff while the UK was largely in lockdown
- Opens new B2B gift card market opportunities
- Enables each hotel and spa to put customer service first
- Authorised personnel can enhance gift card value beyond the initial purchase level
- Easy and intuitive to use
- Scalability with a centralised back office and an unlimited number of PoS (points of sale)
- Led to a 50-fold reduction in directors’ time spent investigating gift voucher anomalies
- Accommodates international coverage with multi-currency and multilingual options
Challenge
Previously, the hotel gift vouchers were paper-based. Although customers would order them from the Jurys Inn and Leonardo Hotels website, the vouchers were printed manually and posted to customers. Staff sent used gift vouchers back to head office for reconciliation against the purchase value, by hand.
Although paper hotel gift cards had historically served their purpose, the Head of Customer Contact and Data Integration, Adrian Bingham, wanted the new Jurys Inn and Leonardo Hotels gift cards to be as slick as possible. They would:
- Enable customers to partially redeem the gift value, with the balance remaining on the gift card for future use
- Digitalise tasks that had previously required physically replacing each gift voucher (e.g. extending expiry dates)
- Reduce environmental impact
- Reduce reliance on postal services
- Gather business intelligence
- Automate administration
- Eliminate the need to recruit seasonal admin staff to print and mail gift cards
- Improve their marketing effectiveness.
- When he contacted potential gift card solution providers, he quickly heard back from Reward-It.
Solution
After making initial contact in October, phase one of the solution was deployed in time for November and the Christmas rush.
“The Christmas rush lasts four weeks, during which time we sell around 90% of our hotel and spa gift cards. We deployed at least one terminal in every property, with more terminals at more complex sites that offer additional services,” explained Adrian.
The hotel and spa gift cards are redeemable at any outlet within the chain. Each transaction is tracked and reconciled by Reward-It’s centralised gift card management system.
Phase two enabled authorised staff to incentivise customers by adding extra funds to gift cards, without any immediate draw on cash flow. This provided invaluable business agility during the pandemic because staff could enhance refunds with a goodwill bonus for customers who opted for a gift card instead of a direct transfer.
Reward-It’s gift card systems are modular, to provide hotels and spas with an advanced back office that is far more cost-effective than commissioning a bespoke alternative. This enables the gift cards to flex with business developments as they happen, helping to futureproof the installation. For example, there are multi-currency and multilingual options.
Results
The branded hotel and spa gift cards have a clean design and high quality finish to enforce brand awareness. They are robust enough to be kept in purses and wallets without compromising their appearance. This is important, because Reward-It’s system enables customers to use cards over multiple transactions until the balance is used up; they don’t have to be used up at once.
Head office can track all gift card transactions, providing real-time business intelligence and financial reconciliation data.
“Previously, hotel and spa gift vouchers would be brought to my attention several times a week. Since adopting Reward-It’s system, I don’t hear about them because we’ve had no significant gift-card-related challenges. It’s been pain-free!” Adrian commented.
Adrian estimated that the old hotel gift voucher system used to consume 5% of his time – now? It’s only 0.1%.
One of the unexpected benefits came in Christmas 2020, when much of the UK was locked down and hospitality staff were unable to go to work. Finding the correct physical addresses of approximately 3,000 staff would be time consuming, let alone printing and posting gift vouchers when most employees had to stay at home. Reward-It’s e-gift modules enabled Jurys Inn and Leonardo Hotels to email a gift to each staff member.
Similarly, business customers can give a hotel and spa e-gift or physical gift cards to employees as rewards and for special occasions. With the paper voucher system, this would not have been feasible.
“The benefits have been huge. It’s nimble, it’s seamless, it works a treat. Reward-It’s gift card system has helped us through the Covid pandemic and will continue to enable us to increase sales through a wider scope of more competitive hotel and spa gift card offerings,” Adrian added.
Staff in Jurys Inn and Leonardo Hotels and spas where gift cards are often used love the new system. In a hotel purchased in 2019, the old gift card system only had one terminal. If somebody tried to spend a gift card at the spa desk, a member of staff had to run to the hotel’s front desk to administer it, then return to the customer in the spa. Since installing Reward-It they have terminals at each PoS, which provides a much better customer experience.
“The benefits have been massive,” Adrian concluded.
To find out more about how Reward-It can help you to introduce a secure, simple gift card system, please get in touch with a member of our expert team.
