PPHE Hotel Group
Gaining a Competitive Edge with UpMail
Headquarters
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Type
Hotel chain
Number of hotels
+49
Region
Europe
Company Size
+5,700 employees
About PPHE
PPHE Hotel Group is an international hospitality real estate company with a portfolio of full- service upscale, upper upscale and lifestyle hotels in major gateway cities in the UK and mainland Europe with brands including Park Plaza®, art’otel® – The Park Plaza Westminster Bridge is one of Europe’s leading conference hotels and one for the largest hotels in London.
The Opportunity
In 2019 PPHE invited UpMail to review the enquiry handling sales process of their hugely important Group and Event segment for the entire UK and European portfolio to identify areas of improvement in sales efficiency, conversion and optimising the customer buying experience.
One of the key objectives for Manju Goel, Vice President Sales, Distribution, Reservations and Customer Service, was to deliver consistency in both the workflow of the Groups and Events departments as well as the look and feel of their sales communications, to deliver greater uniformity and a competitive advantage in what was shared to their clients.
In addition, it was important to find a solution that could be maintained at a property level and managed centrally for essential reporting.
A key part of the review was to identify a solution to improve upon their existing:
- Group and Event Sales proposals
- Team workflow efficiencies for property and cluster sales teams
- Customer response times
- Conversion rates
Rollout and Onboarding
UpMail was initially rolled out across its UK portfolio of Park Plaza Hotels and then out to the European properties over a 12 month period. This decision was based on:
- A custom solution configured for the PPHE sales organisation
- The ability to manage all content, templates and reporting, centrally
- Highly flexible and responsive templates
- The ease of use for the sales team
- Integration with Outlook
- Comprehensive management of digital assets and sales narrative
- Onboarding and training support
- Capabilities to integrate with Oracle Opera Sales & Catering
UpMail worked with both property and corporate UpMail Champions to ensure all users were effectively informed about the tool, the impact on their daily workflow and of course, equipped with training to suit their needs.
Impact of Tool
Manju Goel says “UpMail is a great tool, it allows us to present our proposals knowingly for our properties in the best way possible, it has been adapted by the teams and has been a game changer.” “The service and commitment from the UpMail team has always been first class and incredibly proactive, working with us, based on our needs and challenges of the business. The impact of the tool is evident in how we operate as a team and the results we continually drive”.
“UpMail continues to provide the sales team with a competitive edge, not only in the way it allows our teams to personalise and customise every proposal, but in the way the tool enables the team to work efficiently”, “It’s an important part of our group and event sales process. When we moved to a total Cluster Team during the pandemic, UpMail enabled us to make that transition effortlessly” says Amy Russell, Assistant Director of Distribution ‑ Groups Meetings & Events.
Since being rolled out in 2020 UpMail is used in all of PPHE properties across the UK and Holland enabling the teams to quickly respond to group and event enquiries, with custom, relevant content – consistently!