Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH) is celebrating as it reaches the end of Q2 with a 13% rise in revenue and a 6% increase in room nights compared to the same time last year. It has also seen a 6% year on year rise in revenue from its ‘basket of hotels’, which refers to the 216 hotels that have been part of the brand for over seven years.
Positive outlook
Paul Kerr, CEO at Small Luxury Hotels of the World™ (SLH) says, “It’s particularly encouraging to see a rise in our basket – over the past few years SLH has grown by adding new hotels to the brand but the basket of hotels has remained fairly static. With the end of the recession, it’s a positive outlook for our core hotels, those that have been with us for many years, which are now seeing an uplift in travel and expenditure. We are also excited about launching a new website, planned for the autumn, which will give slh.com a fresh look and feel.”
Mobile reservations up 208%
The SLH website has seen particular success this year with views and bookings made by mobile, with a 50% increase in mobile views year-on-year (312,063 YTD in 2014 vs. 208,129 YTD in 2013). Reservations are up by 20% on tablets and by a staggering 208% on mobile when compared to the same time frame last year.
27 hotels join in 2014 to date
In business development, SLH has welcomed an additional 15 hotels to the exclusive portfolio in Q2, bringing the total of new hotels to 27 so far in 2014. These include nine hotels in EMEA, two new joiners in the Americas and four hotels from the APAC region.
According to Daniel Luddington, director of development at SLH, “We’ve seen some hotels join the brand in the last few months that truly exemplify the SLH ethos. For example, we have really bolstered our ski portfolio in the Alps with some key new locations including: Megeve, Zermatt and Courchevel 1850. We’ve also added the first five star boutique hotel in Madrid, Urso Hotel to our portfolio. On top of that, we’ve welcomed back some hotels that left the brand last year and have decided to re-join including Ketschauer Hof in Germany.”
Club members
The Club of SLH continues to perform strongly with over 350,000 members globally, where the top Club source markets mirror bookings on slh.com with key markets including USA, UK, Germany, Canada and Australia.
Tim Davis, MD of brand and communications, comments, “We continue to put our Club members at the heart of our business by delivering more relevant, targeted and personalised marketing. We are seeing some high spends from our top tiered “Honoured” members and have members who have spent over $65,000 with us already in 2014. This year we have launched our Kobo eReader partnership (where clients booking over four nights or spending over $1,500 receive a Kobo), which has had a positive impact on average spend per booking. We also have an exciting new website launch later in the year and some other new initiatives that will be announced in August and September.”
About Small Luxury Hotels of the World
The Small Luxury Hotels of the World™ (SLH) brand is an unrivalled portfolio of some of the world’s finest small independent hotels. Comprising over 520 hotels in more than 70 countries, the diversity of the individual hotels, and the experiences that they offer, is exceptional. From cutting-edge design hotels to palatial 17th century mansions, city centre sanctuaries to remote private islands, historic country houses to idyllic resorts, Small Luxury Hotels of the World offers only the very best.
Reservations can be made at any Small Luxury Hotels of the World property online at www.slh.com, via the free SLH iPhone app or by contacting your favourite travel agent.
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