Smart Talking with Apex Hotels

In this week’s Smart Talking, we chat to Sam Weston, E-Marketing Manager at Apex Hotels.

Hi Sam, welcome to Smart Talking. Please tell us about Apex Hotels and a little about your guests.

Sam: Apex Hotels are one of the UK’s leading operators of contemporary city centre hotels. We have two properties in London, four in Edinburgh and a hotel and spa in Dundee. We have quite a universal appeal with our product, so we have guests from most demographics, both business and leisure, with a large proportion of our business coming from international tourism.

The city of Edinburgh is transformed by its festivals in August and given that Apex has four hotels in the city, how do things change for the hotels during this period?

Sam: They get very busy! Having two hotels in the Grassmarket means we’re at the centre of the celebrations, so there’s always a fantastic atmosphere as festival veterans and new visitors to Edinburgh start to explore the city. It’s a fantastic time to experience Edinburgh and its people, not to mention the incredible range of shows and international acts.

Travellers are becoming more demanding and more savvy these days – in your experience what are the key things they want from their stay with you?

Sam: I think the transparency of online review sites and user generated content online mean that travellers are more informed than ever before. Quite rightly, they have high expectations, so the key here is consistency, ensuring that your standards of service don’t slip, that guests have the very best experience. Reviews, recommendations and word of mouth referrals follow and hopefully the guest’s expectations are met with an exceptional stay.

The current economic climate is particularly challenging for businesses, not least for the Scottish tourism industry. How is your business coping with this – any positives coming out of the experience and any advice for others?

Sam: Of course the current financial climate is a challenging environment for anyone to do business in, but it can be leveraged to your advantage too. Adapting your business to changing consumer demand is crucial. We’ve adopted this approach as well as investing carefully in targeted online marketing, achieving fantastic growth, ahead of industry predictions, for the last three years. The wealth of data that the internet offers means decisions can be based around statistics rather than best guess work, ensuring that your business maximizes return on investment from marketing spend. At the very least, get Google Analytics, it’s free and can transform your online business!

Do social media and digital technology have a place in your business?

Sam: We’re quite proactive in social media, maintaining profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Youtube, Flickr and others. Whilst the common gripe about social media is the difficulty to measure a direct return on investment (even if that investment is time alone) the benefit of brand awareness and the long term business impact it can have is where we see the value of social media.

Smaller brands have a real opportunity to punch above their weight, simply by gaining understanding in social media and leveraging it to their business gain. It’s entirely achievable that one social media-savvy company owner could garner a greater following than a national chain, it’s all about how you engage with your fans/followers. I’d recommend starting off with Facebook & Twitter to reach the majority of the audience. You can even set them up to feed off each other so you’re only really updating one source, great if you’re strapped for time.

What are Apex Hotels up to at the moment – any news you would like to share with us?

Sam: We’re opening a new hotel in London early next year, just off Fleet Street, in Temple Court. It’s the first hotel in one of London’s Inns of Court, with 184 luxurious rooms in an amazing location, so we’re really excited about it’s opening in early 2012.

We can’t complete the interview without a question about the famous Apex Duck – how did the idea of the duck come about and why do you think the duck is so popular?

Sam: The original Apex duck was called ‘Edwin Buwwughs’ and he pretty much dominated the Apex website back in 1998 when the first website launched. Thirteen years later, there are now seven ducks, one for each of our hotels. We recently polled our Facebook fans to name them all (check out the poll here) so now they all have their own unique identities! It’s a fun way to informalize our brand a little and it’s a talking point for our guests. It’s also very useful for social media as it really engages our followers. We’ve even encouraged our guests to take pictures of the duck around the world, with some fantastic results – the ducks have visited La Palma, Hong Kong,  Thailand, Malaysia, Australia to name just a few  – the Apex ducks are better- travelled than all of us!

Many thanks for Smart Talking with us, Sam, and all the best for the rest of the season!

For more information visit: www.apexhotels.co.uk or follow Apex Hotels on Twitter and Facebook