Testimonial Areias do Seixo
A magical place in a magical setting, Areias do Seixo is a natural haven less than one hour from Lisbon. This is a special place where pine trees, dunes and sea murmur their secrets. Guests experience originality, sublime comfort and an unerring sense of style that seamlessly blends in with the natural surroundings of the land, the sea and the shore.
Each room tells its own intriguing story, while the restaurant transports guests to a place where aroma, taste and colour come together, using raw materials sourced from a bountiful Mother Nature.
How did you manage your hotel operations, marketing, and reservations before partnering with Guestcentric?
Guestcentric is our first booking engine and channel manager partner. Although we had a website prior to partnering with Guestcentric, we did not have a direct sales channel and only worked manually with third-party reservations channels.
Although we were not working at Areias do Seixo prior to partnering with Guestcentric, we cannot begin to imagine how our team managed our properties and reservations without the platform. All our information was stored in an excel file, so it must have been extremely challenging to manage not only the bookings, but also the guest communications prior to the guests’ stay, all of which required lots of staff to work through the information.
Although we had a website before joining Guestcentric, it was not managed by us but by the provider. Everytime we wanted to edit or update content, it had to be done through them. Now the structure of our hotel is very different. We have a small but dedicated communications team with the skill set to manage these activities internally, and having Guestcentric’s application makes it that much easier.
In your view, what are some of the benefits or gains you have received or expect to receive from using Guestcentric's Booking Engine, Website, and Channel Manager solution?
From an internal perspective, it’s much easier to manage all the bookings because everything is integrated. We have the connection between the information the guest can see and the information in our PMS, which helps us a great deal in our daily management.
The website is also an effective tool to communicate with our guests, and having it integrated with Guestcentric’s booking engine has also helped us increase our direct sales. Essentially, we can sell more in less time.
We truly believe that the service we are providing, in terms of information and communication to the client, is much better because we have those tools. Imagine for instance we have a special promotion that we want to launch, we can get it live online very quickly.
