For Immediate Release
March 31, 2009
Passkey expected to enhance the event experience for Great Wolf’s planners and guests while allowing it to market room up-sells and hotel amenities directly to its group guests
Quincy, MA — Passkey, the worldwide leader in online group reservations today announced the addition of Great Wolf Resorts, Inc.® (NASDAQ: WOLF) to its rapidly growing customer base. Using the Passkey system, Great Wolf Resorts’ Great Wolf Lodge®-brand of resorts will be able to offer its meeting planners and attendees a world-class hotel booking and event management experience while enjoying major savings and efficiencies. Importantly, Great Wolf Resorts hopes to generate incremental revenues from its groups by using Passkey’s suite of highly-targeted marketing tools.
Recognizing the importance of meetings and events to its overall business growth, over the past 3 years Great Wolf Resorts has added conference centers to six of its resorts. “Naturally, as companies expand, old business strategies no longer apply,” said Julie Stokes, vice president of sales & marketing for the company. “As we began adding the conference centers and our group volume took off, we became increasingly aware of the challenges associated with managing group reservations. We needed a solution that allowed both our property teams and our clients to manage their groups with ease.” Stokes added that Passkey’s brand identity among meeting planners made the choice an easy one, and that its online functionality and growth potential made the product a good fit.
With QuickLists, Passkey’s advanced room list tool, Great Wolf Resorts can now automate its room list process and shift over 50% of its group reservations online while providing planners real-time access to valuable information and intelligence via Passkey’s event dashboards and Smart Alerts.
More importantly, Passkey will provide Great Wolf Resorts with a proven toolset designed to generate incremental group revenues and profits. With the ability to now send targeted email campaigns to group guests pre-arrival, post-stay or even while guests are at the property - promoting room upgrades, extended stays, the spa and restaurants.
“Passkey’s Group Campaigns are an easy and effective way for hotels to reach out to their group guests and offer them everything from room upgrades and extended stays to information on hotel amenities such as golf, spa and dining,” notes Greg Pesik, president & CEO of Passkey. “It is a revenue maximizing tool that focuses on promoting the hidden jewels of a hotel and preserving momentum in times of uncertainty. We have seen a 300% increase in the usage of email campaigns over the past few months as properties have recognized the need to implement new marketing strategies to grow their group business. By optimizing the use of Group Campaigns, Great Wolf Resorts will benefit greatly from increased incremental revenues and profits.”