Beyond RevPAR: Judi Blakeburn (CCO) at Another Place & Watergate Bay on a Guest-Centric Revenue Revolution
We recently had the pleasure of chatting with Judi Blakeburn, Chief Commercial Officer at Another Place and Watergate Bay, who shared the benefits and transformative effects of a guest-centric philosophy that extends far beyond traditional RevPAR metrics.
Read on to discover Blakeburn’s journey in fostering a ‘This is our guest. Everything we do must connect to them‘ ethos and how this approach has not only revolutionised the guest experience but has also become the driving force behind a more holistic and resilient revenue generation strategy, one that prioritises Revenue Per Available Guest (RevPAG) and cultivates meaningful, long-lasting guest relationships.
How has your guest-centric philosophy of ‘This is our guest. Everything we do must connect to them’ helped to transform your guest’s experience and your approach to revenue generation?
Judi: Well, I’ve come to that philosophy, not through a strategic revenue management approach, but because of who we are as a business. I’ve always worked within hospitality, basically since I went to university, and I joined Watergate Bay Hotel in 2003, having been with Rick Stein prior. I arrived at a time in Cornwall when there was a real renaissance in travel to the county and I think it’s fair to say, a reimagining of Cornwall as a destination. I was fortunate enough to come and work with Will and Henry Ashworth at Watergate Bay, as they were working to develop a lifestyle brand; probably the first lifestyle hotel for Cornwall at the time.
Back then, we would never have called ourselves one, but we were akin to a resort. We were crafting guest experiences, we weren’t simply a hotel. We wanted great places for people to eat and drink, to ensure they could get out on the beach and whatever the weather, they could experience everything our destination had to offer. We were endeavouring to create truly memorable experiences that would bring our guests back, time and time again. We were also trying to expand the season for Cornwall, beyond simply April to October and took the decision to open the hotel, and all our businesses, 365 days a year.
At the end of 2005 it was all about the guest experience and encouraging people to stay longer and do more. But with that approach, we had to consider whether or not it was working. I had inherited a disparate set of software, a tech stack that was completely siloed, making it very hard for us to understand whether a guest who came to stay for three nights was simply staying in their room or engaging with the meaningful experiences we were creating for them that in turn, was securing our secondary spend.
Our property management system provider at that time came to visit me. I had a piece of paper, and I drew a circle, and I said, “That’s my guest. Everything has to connect back to them”. I drew lines outwards and explained they had to be at the heart of everything. I can’t have seven profiles for one guest, I need a single profile. His response was that it wasn’t possible. And you know, at the time, we were a small hotel. We didn’t have a big budget but I knew bigger businesses were doing it already.
We needed to be able to book rooms, sell surf lessons and treatments and make sure that our restaurant availability was visible to our guests, all the things that you would just expect today as standard. With the team, I reviewed many systems to find a viable solution for our business, particularly as we were beginning to think about opening another hotel, and wanted to find a solution that met our vision. We really shopped around looking at the best in class solutions… what might we be able to knit together?
Finally, we bought a Canadian solution called ResortSuite, a complete resort system. That gave us what we wanted; a single guest view. They provided us with our property management system, our F&B software, our spa, gift card and our activity system.
A couple of years ago Agilisys acquired ResortSuite and we are now moving to a more modern, cloud-based, take on that integrated approach. This approach has really helped us as we’ve grown, we now have three sites, plus a new aparthotel just opened in Cornwall. So, four sites that all require regular, ongoing, deep dive data analysis and insights.
In many ways, our focus has always been more about a RevPAG (Revenue Per Available Guest) model than the more traditional RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room), because we are a multi-facetted hospitality business.
As a relatively smaller, independent group, has it been more challenging to adopt the tech that the larger groups take for granted?
Judi: As an independent or a small group, you can have big aspirations about what you want to achieve and remain quite agile. We’re fortunate, we have a lot of expertise in-house. Including our own IT team.
Often hoteliers find it challenging to move systems; because it’s so disruptive to business operations. But that single system that fully integrates is vital for us, because we don’t have the resource to stitch together many disparate systems to achieve the same outcome.
That decision, what solution do you choose, is often driven by the size of your business and what you can achieve. Having an in-house tech team who can implement change for us is very powerful. I’ve just come off a call with four people who are currently driving that change for us. They’re doing an ‘all in one go’ system change this month for one of our hotels. But what we’re doing at the others, is taking a more modular approach. We’re implementing things in a phased way to try and ensure seamlessness for the operations team.
Personally, I must acknowledge that I’ve always loved tech. I’m the person who will ‘press the button’ to find out what it does, and I welcome change. But not everyone is like that. You have to make sure that you’re sharing information regularly with your teams. You’re taking people on the journey with you, and that change is a well-managed, well-understood process.
As we all strive to increase ADR’s, do you think there’s perhaps a risk that guests book shorter stays and therefore have less time to spend on property?
Judi: We budget for ancillary revenue to be 40% of overall revenue, and I only see that growing as we continue to develop our guest experience. However, it’s been hard in the last 18 months, to achieve the same levels of occupancy, the same room rates, as we were prior. People are more value-driven, waiting for that last minute deal, whichever end of the market you’re operating in.
There is a real balance to be struck between driving up room rates and maintaining secondary spend, and we are focused on ensuring that our occupancy numbers are there through continuing to craft rich guest experiences that give guests reasons to stay longer and come back again.
As the industry moves beyond a room-centric to a relationship-centric model, how has your group adapted to build stronger, more meaningful guest connections?
Judi: Well, I was at an event earlier this year where I heard Chris Greenwood speak. He’s from the Moffat Centre for Travel and Tourism Business Development, based at the Glasgow Caledonian University and their research was really fascinating. Chris talked about the resilience of the traveller and their desire for experience, for something more meaningful and how that’s heavily ingrained within loyalty too.
So, our focus on RevPAG is actually being driven by the traveller and why they are travelling in the first place. Why are people coming to visit us? Because we are creating moments for them in their lives that are meaningful and powerful. And as hoteliers, that’s our job. I truly believe that’s so important. We’re coming into a time where our brands and the market direction are absolutely as one.
Another of the trends identified for this year has been ‘quiet tourism’. And we’re perfectly placed to deliver quiet tourism experiences too.
With Another Place, we bought a country house hotel which had quarter of a mile of Lake frontage on Ullswater and 18 acres of Lake District National Park. It was a complete gift to our brand. We set about expanding the number of rooms it had and bought the pub behind the hotel. We have four restaurants, so plenty of light and shade in terms of where you can eat and drink. Fine dining, all day bar restaurant, a glass house with a wood fired pizza, and a traditional pub just moments up the hill. All centred on driving up length of stay and giving people choice.
My focus when we first arrived was to find fantastic partners to deliver activities for us. I have one of the world’s best open water swimmers, delivering daytime swimming, night swimming and full moon swimming. You can kayak on the lake. You can stand up paddle board. This year, you’ll be able to learn to wing foil. You can simply hang out in our beautiful grounds. We have an Ofsted registered childcare facility so you bring your children and they can have the best holiday too.
We crafted a whole series of walks. When you arrive at the hotel, we’ll give you maps that we’ve had made to help people get out on the fells. We have a partnership with Land Rover Discovery with two cars on site, which you can take free of charge for a day at a time, so you can get out and explore and experience everything around you.
When you add all that up, that’s an awful lot of booking. A lot more than simply a room. It’s really meant that we’ve become a destination, not just a hotel.
How has this approach helped you navigate the challenges of the current market?
Judi: All of it helps to counterbalance the headwinds we’re facing. We’re seeing people book later, want better deals and stay for a shorter length of time. Everything we’re doing is pushing back the other way. Why would you only stay for one or two nights? There’s so much to do. And hey, once you’re staying, you need to book a swim, and you need to book another dining experience, and you need to book a treatment, and your children need to go to kids’ zone and so on.
This approach really isn’t manageable unless you have an integrated system. Our front of house team needs a single screen in front of them and be able to say, ‘, let me just do that for you now’. They can’t be constantly swapping systems; it needs to be seamless.
Finally, looking ahead, what emerging trends or technologies are you most excited about, and how do you plan to make the most of them to continue elevating your guest experience?
Judi: Interestingly, one of our investors, recently asked me a similar question, what do I think AI is going to do for us and for hospitality in general?
At the moment, my focus is around Generative Engine Optimisation or GEO. The AI agents are all using information sources, so it comes down to whether your content is discoverable. And is it the right content for their searches?
Also, what do we need to know about AI travel assistants and how they’re going to support potential guests and our existing guests in making and booking their travel plans? Are they going to get in our way? Are they going to be providing more and different opportunities for existing guests? Are we going to appear in their itineraries for potential guests?
I find it all fascinating and I think it’s important for all hoteliers to inform themselves, to attend webinars and upskill.
Back to today, I think we’d all still say that while we’re getting close to a single guest profile, the leveraging of that data and using it to personalise the guest experience is something we continue to learn and experiment with. There’s still a journey to go on. It should be one of those key questions we ask ourselves daily – how can we use the technology to continue to deliver memorable guest experiences?
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Image credit: Michael Lazenby, Travel, Hospitality and Commercial Photographer and Filmmaker
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