80 DAYS launches Hotel Benchmark

The award-winning creative and digital marketing agency 80 DAYS has launched an online industry benchmarking service to help hoteliers compare their website and digital marketing performance against competitors.

We spoke with the 80 DAYS team and their Managing Partner, David Gardner, to find out more about their work to create this useful and powerful platform.

What is hotel benchmark and what are the main benefits for hoteliers using the platform?

Hotel Benchmark allows hoteliers to compare their website and digital marketing performance against the industry and their competitors. Over the last year or two we’ve built up a community of 500+ hotels across 50 countries, all subscribing and sharing their data to gain valuable context for how their website performance and digital marketing stacks up.

Our new on-line platform at www.hotelbenchmarking.com means you can sign up quickly and easily. All you need to do is share ‘read-only’ access to your google analytics account and within a few days you can download monthly reports that help you understand how your hotel is performing against the industry and competitors.

You don’t need to be a data scientist to understand the report. It uses a variety of familiar straightforward metrics to illustrate traffic, conversion and revenue as well as Google Ad and website performance. A simple traffic light system helps quickly illustrate if the hotel is performing above or below the industry average with red highlighting areas for opportunity and growth while green lights pointing to areas of success – although everyone can always improve!

The report also illustrates your hotel’s digital marketing performance calculated as an index over time – our basic report show’s 2 months of historical data and our Premium report 13 months.

Is hotel benchmark for independent hotels or groups?

I think it’s a really powerful tool for both. It’s great for independents to have access to another level of digital business intelligence and understand how they can compete against the bigger groups, but equally for those groups to understand where individual properties might need some love. Our growing community includes independent hotels as well as groups from over 50 countries and we offer a discounted price for more than one hotel from any group that subscribes to our Premium Report.

For larger groups with multiple brands, we’ll work alongside the hotel’s digital teams to develop and deliver bespoke dashboards to provide expert data analysis and business intelligence.

How does it work? Is it easy to set up?

Really easy. You sign-up via the new on-line platform, provide information on your property(s) including location, star rating and facilities. Then grant us 'read-only' access to your Google Analytics account. Once we have verified that your Google Analytics account is set-up and tracking correctly your hotel(s) are assigned to a data-set based on the information submitted during sign-up i.e. London 4-star city hotel.

Everything is secure and anonymised. Data from an individual hotel’s Google Analytics account is aggregated with other hotels in the same data set to create monthly reports which can be downloaded by the hotel at the beginning of every month directly from their user account on the platform. Users do not have access to individual hotel data, and their own data can only be seen  as part of our aggregated reports. 

The sign-up process takes a few minutes for an individual property and our team can help with groups that would like to sign up more than four hotels. There is a contact form and an on-line chat facility that can answer questions and guide you during the sign-up process.

Is the platform free? Are there different packages available?

Our entry-level product which is the basic report is free to hotels that subscribe and share their data (anonymously) with the Hotel Benchmark community. For a hotel that is seeking more detailed metrics around their website performance and digital marketing, and to understand how their hotel is performing against a group of hotels for comparison purposes (competitive set) we also offer a Premium report which is £69 per month or £59 per month for hotels that are signing up more than one property from the same group.

The Premium report also provides 12 months of historical data. As I mentioned earlier we also offer larger groups a bespoke benchmark product which is developed alongside the client to ensure we are delivering a product that matches their needs exactly.

What are your clients saying about you?

Many community members have been using the benchmarking service from 2017, and since we launched the new on-line platform at the beginning of April the number of hotels subscribing continues to grow.

Clients like it for many reasons, but the general feeling from the community is that it offers a place for them to see all of their data in one place, helping to highlight areas of success and opportunities for growth and shaping future digital strategies. For independent hotels without access to the same level of business intelligence as their group counterparts, the Hotel Benchmark provides valuable context within their competitive landscape, a small example being what their competitors are spending on Google Ads each month.

Do you have a launch offer or a special discount for our readers?

We would like to invite readers to sign up and enjoy a 30-day free trial for our Premium report. At the end of the free trial hotels can continue to enjoy a paid Premium report or downgrade to the free Basic report.

1. Sign up at https://www.hotelbenchmarking.com/
2. Set up your hotel(s) within the platform
3. Go to your profile, click on ‘Purchase subscription’
4. Click on 'Have a trial code? Use it here'
5. Paste in your trial code FIRSTMONTHFREE

We hope you will enjoy using Hotel Benchmark and please do recommend it to colleagues in the industry to help us grow our community!