Case Study: How the Coeur d'Alene Golf & Spa Resort Used Technology to Drive $10k Additional Revenue Per Month

Nestled along the beautiful shoreline of Lake Coeur d’Alene in North Idaho, the Coeur d’Alene Golf & Spa Resort has provided a world-class luxury experience to every guest that has stepped onto the 338-room property since 1986. However, like most hotels across the globe, the Coeur d’Alene faced a number of challenges due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

To ensure the resort would continue to provide its exceptional-level of guest service uninterrupted, the Coeur d’Alene’s Front Desk Manager Bailey O’Neil knew he could lean on technology for help. 

The resort had implemented a guest messaging system before the pandemic and saw modest benefits in guest satisfaction and staff efficiency. So it made perfect sense to O’Neil that more advanced technology solutions could augment the guest experience and meet the needs of the day. This, he realized, was how the Coeur d’Alene Resort would survive the pandemic and continue to thrive into the future. 

However, it wasn’t until O’Neil partnered with Canary Technologies that he realized the full extent of what the right set of technology tools could do. 

Personalized Guest Check-In  

Like all luxury properties, The Coeur d’Alene Golf & Spa Resort places a special emphasis on providing a welcoming and personalized experience as guests check-in. 

O’Neil knew that utilizing Canary’s Check-In product would enable his staff to welcome guests before they even stepped onto the property and cut down on administrative work. The result is a frictionless check-in, in which front desk staff are able to focus on providing a white-glove, friendly service as opposed to sorting through paperwork. 

Gone are the days of delaying the guest from their luxurious stay by making them wait in line, show their ID, sign a registration card, and swipe their credit card.

“Check-in is so much smoother," O'Neil says. "It used to be a regular occurrence to have a line that stretched from the front desk to the lobby door. But since we've implemented Canary, we've never really had a line at the front desk. It's been really impressive since we're running at 100% occupancy with 200 guests checking in on some days.”

$10k per Month in New Upsell Revenue 

The Coeur d’Alene’s check-in process was merely the first area of operations to improve. Throughout the guest journey, every visitor to the Resort is now able to curate their experience through subtle interactions with technology. 

For example, The Coeur d’Alene decided to offer additional amenities and upsells to guests digitally on their personal mobile devices to near instantaneous success. 

“Canary’s Upsells Platform is incredible," O'Neil adds. "We have more than $1,000 in room service upsells this week alone. It's all extra revenue that we wouldn't have gotten without Canary.”  

Within a few weeks of implementation, The Coeur d’Alene was bringing in nearly $10,000 in additional upsell revenue every month.

‍Guest Messaging

Providing stellar customer service is the name of the game for luxury resorts like The Coeur d’Alene. This means ensuring the hotel staff can stay in touch with every guest no matter where they are on property. For The Coeur d'Alene this meant allowing guests to easily communicate with hotel staff via text. While the property already had a guest messaging system in place, it decided it was time to replace its current guest messaging system with Canary’s.

‍Real-Time Checkout 

To round out the full guest journey with supplemental tech tools, The Coeur d’Alene Resort added Canary’s real-time mobile checkout solution to its technology stack. This produced two beneficial results for the resort — one expected, and one not. 

The first result of the implementation was an increase in positive guest reviews thanks to Canary’s inclusion of a review request during the checkout process. Since Canary’s checkout solution collects guest feedback 8-18 hours before the guest leaves the property, the Resort staff are able to catch any negative guest experience while the guest is still on property. 

“We love the reviews and feedback from guests before they leave the property," O'Neil explains. "And it's crazy how easy it is to combine Canary Checkout & Messages. Checkout allows us to identify unhappy guests and then Messages enables us to proactively reach out to unhappy guests and improve their experience before they leave. It really helps with guest satisfaction and is super easy to use.”

The second, and more surprising, result was a significant improvement in housekeeping efficiency. 

“Checkout is a lot more impactful than we initially anticipated," O'Neil notes. "Half of our guests do not typically checkout at the front desk, so we had no idea when the rooms were available to clean. If a guest left at 8am, we wouldn't find out until 11:30am. With Canary, we now know when guests are going to leave ahead of time, which enables housekeeping to plan the night before.”