The five-year-old Hotel Zamora, a white-washed, Mediterranean-style
luxury boutique hotel, was St. Pete Beach, Florida’s first new hotel in
decades. It overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway and the azure waters
and soft, white-sand beach of the Gulf of Mexico.
“ I’ve worked with probably 15 different revenue managers throughout my
career, and Christie Crawford from SHR is definitely the best one yet.”
— Bob Sauerwine, Hotel Zamora Director of Sales and Marketing
Windsurfer® CRS, Revenue Management for Hire
In August of 2018, Hotel Zamora transitioned from a Kimpton property
into an independent one. Bob Sauerwine, who started five months later
as Director of Sales and Marketing, described it as a challenging time.
“When Kimpton left,” he said, “basically the hotel’s entire infrastructure
walked out the front door. The new ownership had to get a PMS in place,
their housekeeping department and maintenance department and culinary
team had to be rebuilt, they needed to get a revenue management team in
place—everything. That is why the new majority owner reached out
to SHR.”
Bob said the independent hotel was “running blind” at first, meaning that,
although they had occupancy percentages for the previous year under
Kimpton, as well as average daily rates and revenues, they didn’t know how
the hotel achieved those numbers.
Christie helped establish a length of stay restriction for weekends when
there’s a lot of demand, which was a strong move. “It brought our
revenues considerably higher,” said Bob, “and we saw a massive swing in
RevPAR index.”
Bob said Christie also tracks promotions on TripAdvisor, Facebook, and
similar channels, and gets a better ROI than the market. “We’re getting about an
18:1 return on investment on some of those promotions, compared to the
market of around 7 or 8:1.”
The hotel just ended its first year of independent operation, and with the
help of Revenue Management for Hire it surpassed the previous year’s
numbers. “It was basically like opening a new hotel because we didn’t have
details from the previous ownership,” he said. “But it worked out great.”
Rooms sold increased 17 percent, room revenue increased 9 percent, and
outlet revenue was up $300,000 over the previous year. He said they
couldn’t have done it without Christie and SHR.
For the hotel’s second full year of operating independently, Bob said, they
project a double-digit increase YOY for both Rooms and F&B. He said SHR,
and Christie, will be a big part of that success by continuing to help them
maintain rate integrity, keep occupancy near 100% index to drive guests
into their outlets, and reduce third party commissions.
“Based on SHR,” he said, “and Christie’s commitment to the success of The
Hotel Zamora rate strategies, we feel very confident that 2020 will be an
incredible year and will help us achieve even higher margins in 2021.”
Visit thehotelzamora.com.