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Significant growth for Utell`s member hotels
Utell Hotels & Resorts has reported that its Utell Luxury Collection, a portfolio of exclusive member hotels has enjoyed on average a 30 per cent year on year growth on booking revenues for participating hotels. Latest figures reveal the Collection’s growth during the first four months of 2007 compared with the same period during 2006, and this further demonstrates the success of Utell’s segmentation strategy which was launched earlier this year.

The revenue growth of hotels in this portfolio significantly outperforms many other non-participating Luxury hotels that are yet to join the Collection. The statistics also demonstrate that in addition to the 30 per cent increase in booking revenues, room night reservations were up 20 per cent, also indicating a healthy increase whilst also demonstrating that travellers booking the Collection yield a higher spend per room night.

The positive figures are good news for the Collection member hotels, as well as for Utell Hotels & Resorts which earlier this year embarked upon a segmentation strategy. This categorised properties into lifestyle areas such as Luxury, Boutique, Golf and Spa Collections to promote hotels which vary in their architecture, location and atmosphere, but share key characteristics and similar levels of services and experiences worldwide.

The segmentation strategy has been led by valuable research conducted earlier this year as part of the Utell Us 2007 Survey which questioned over 1,600 leisure and business travellers and concluded that travellers value location and lifestyle offerings over hotel brands when choosing a hotel.
Diana Banks, Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing, Utell Hotels & Resorts, commented: Our segmentation strategy is already yielding great success and we are delighted to see such considerable increase in bookings and awareness for the Utell Collection member hotels. These strong initial results have exceeded our expectations and demonstrated that consumers are choosing their hotels by segment, as advocated by the Utell segmentation strategy which launched in March this year. It is really rewarding to see that hotels which value the opportunity to reach segmented markets are already reaping the benefits of their Utell Luxury Collection membership.

The Utell Luxury Collection shows an average increase of 30 per cent, demonstrating that the distribution, sales and marketing activity for Collection has generated phenomenal growth. We are very much hoping that following these favourable statistics, many other Utell hotels will sign up for Collection membership to share in this success.

Following the Utell Luxury Collection launch early this year, Utell has also seen a number of additional properties join the portfolio to take advantage of promotion, marketing and distribution support offered by Collections membership including the Emirates Marina Hotel & Residence in Dubai, Las Dunas Beach Hotel & Spa near Malaga in Spain and the Hotel Selenza Thalasso in Malaga, Spain. For 2008, Utell will be producing new printed directories for the Luxury, Boutique, Golf and Spa Collections. A Business Collection and Meetings Collections are following soon. Rania Deimezi - Wednesday, August 22, 2007