Navigating the Digital Era in Hospitality
In the highly competitive hospitality industry, where a significant 85% of travelers use mobile devices for booking and 88% visit stores within a week after a local smartphone search, standing out is crucial. Barceló Hotel Group, a prominent player in this sector, operates in 29 countries across 130 cities with a portfolio of +190 hotels, each boasting 4 or 5-star ratings.
Understanding the critical role of local SEO in driving traffic and conversions, Barceló Hotel Group partnered with Uberall to enhance their online presence and customer engagement.
Implementation: Revolutionizing Local SEO
Barceló faced the challenge of distinguishing itself in a saturated market and needed to effectively leverage local SEO to drive meaningful business results. Partnering with Uberall, Barceló focused on enhancing their local SEO strategy to improve their hybrid customer experience and feedback loop. This involved optimizing their online presence across various platforms to improve local search rankings, actively managing customer reviews, and encouraging their local teams to respond to review feedback to build trust and credibility.
Alberto Rodriguez Camara, Global Head of Digital Marketing, Barceló Hotel Group says: “With its dedicated Customer Support Team since day one, Uberall enabled us to build a delightful, frictionless hybrid customer journey for our customers.”
Leveraging Uberall’s platform, Barceló was able to:
- Optimize Listings Across Platforms: While Google was a key focus, Uberall ensured Barceló maintained accurate and optimized listings on other channels like Apple, Bing, and Instagram, broadening their reach and improving customer experiences.
- Implement API-Driven Bulk Updates: Barceló’s staff now use forms integrated with Uberall’s API to update attributes across all their listings. This guarantees that information remains accurate and relevant, improving customer satisfaction and reducing the effort involved in maintaining listings.
- Seasonal Visual Updates: Barceló strategically updates their listings photos to reflect seasonal offerings or hotel-specific features, like pool photos for summer and rooftop views for city hotels. This approach not only enhances customer engagement but also boosts search visibility for specific queries, such as “best sunset views in [City].”
- Enhanced Review Management with AI: Using Uberall’s AI-powered review assistant, Barceló has streamlined review responses, achieving a 95% response rate in 2024, up from 87% in 2023. The average response time has also been reduced to just two days, reinforcing Barceló’s commitment to customer feedback.
- Actionable Insights Through Analytics Integration: Barceló pulls data from Uberall’s analytics via API and uses tools like ChatGPT to monitor top and bottom performers weekly, enabling data-driven decisions for continuous improvement.
Outstanding Outcomes: Measuring the Impact
Within just a few months on the Uberall platform, Barceló enhanced its Google Business Profiles with 210 new Hotel Attributes, reached 100% profile completeness, and eliminated all duplicates. These improvements helped the brand increase revenue from Local SEO by 56.47% within the first eight months of implementation alone. Not to mention:
- Revenue Growth: Barceló has experienced a remarkable 214% increase in revenue since 2019, illustrating the direct impact of effective local SEO on their bottom line.
- Improved Customer Engagement: Sessions have increased by 25%, and conversions are up by 20%, demonstrating enhanced customer interactions driven by optimized local listings.
- Transaction Increases: Barceló has also reported a 42% rise in transactions year-to-date for 2024, highlighting the effectiveness of their local SEO efforts.
- Positive Review Metrics: In 2024, Barceló achieved an average review rating of 4.6, an improvement from 4.5 in 2022. They received 170,583 reviews in 2024, a 12% increase from the previous year.
Barceló Hotel Group’s partnership with Uberall highlights the transformative potential of local SEO in hospitality. By integrating Uberall’s platform into their daily operations, Barceló has achieved significant business growth, demonstrating the powerful impact of optimizing local SEO at scale.
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