A visit to Portmeirion Village in North Wales is an experience in and of itself. From its unique architecture, to its luxury accommodation and fine-dining restaurants, to its 70 acres of woodland and 4 miles of coast, almost 300,000 visitors come to the village each year to escape the daily grind in what many TripAdvisor reviewers have described as a “magical place”.
With pride in their Welsh heritage, and what Revenue Supervisor, Gareth Jones, describes as an aim to “continually improve our service and facilities and to gain insight into what our customers expect from us,” Portmeirion Village’s management teams looked to GuestRevu to help them collect feedback from their local and international visitors.
Managing their time better, incorporating Welsh into communication, and assigning responsibility
Spending less time processing and more time improving
Replacing hand-written comment cards with online guest questionnaires has been a “welcome change” for the teams at Portmeirion Village, explains Gareth: “It has also allowed us to spend less time processing data from our comment cards and more time addressing issues raised and improving service.”
“We assigned one member of the management team with oversight and each department is responsible for checking and responding to their own reviews,” he explains, “and we’re certainly getting better insight into the experience that we provide and what our customers value.”
Gareth believes that not only are the questionnaires a better solution for the teams, but also for the visitors to the village: “It shows our customers that their opinions are valued. Based on the number of responses we have been receiving, our customers are happy to provide feedback and want to tell us about their experience, and they can take their time and complete it when they feel like it, rather than while they are on holiday!”
The feedback that the teams are receiving has also helped Portmeirion’s management to pinpoint where improvements can be made to the experience that they provide. In one instance, Gareth explains, they were able to adjust their menu to accommodate more of their guests:
“We realised based on the amount of feedback we were getting that we actually have a lot more vegan and vegetarian customers than we previously thought. This has led us to offer vegan and vegetarian menus as standard and not just by pre-arrangement.”
The feedback that the village has been getting also showed management that hotel guests prefer to be chauffeured from a main parking lot to their accommodation, rather than parking at the cottages themselves, a realisation that came as a surprise to Gareth: “We would've thought that the individual parking spaces would have been more valued by our customers. But knowing this means we can make the site safer and less cluttered with cars!”
Speaking to guests in their own languages
Thanks to GuestRevu’s belief that no two properties are the same, and their openness to customising guest surveys, Portmeirion Village’s management are able to ask their visitors the questions that they need answers to in both English and their native Welsh.
“This was a new language for GuestRevu, one that didn't exist on their system, but they were really accommodating in adding this for us,” Gareth explains.
Getting more reviews with less effort
GuestRevu’s automated review collection has meant that the staff and management teams at Portmeirion Village no longer need to spend hours scrolling through review sites and online travel agencies to find out what their visitors think of them. Better still, GuestRevu’s Platinum Partnership with TripAdvisor has meant that they are not only saving time in collecting reviews, but finding themselves with more reviews to collect.
Since implementing GuestRevu, Portmeirion Village has seen their TripAdvisor review volume increase by a whopping 569%, and the change has had an immediate effect on their website visits and direct bookings as well.
“We can see that our special offer clicks on Trip Advisor have increased by 98% and our Direct Referral Clicks have increased by 8%,” Gareth explains.
Keeping better track of review responses
Where before the management teams at Portmeirion Village were finding it difficult to keep track of review responses and how they were being resolved, since introducing GuestRevu, management have found it far easier to keep track of who is responding to feedback, and how guests’ comments are being implemented.
“All of the department heads use the system,” explains Gareth. “Our Head of Marketing, Hotel Manager, Castle Manager, Restaurant Manager, Attraction Manager, Head of Housekeeping, Head of Maintenance, Reservations Manager and Spa Manager. This has allowed us to work better as a team, as everyone can see guest feedback and what steps are being taken to resolve or address any issues raised by guests.”