Built in 1973 in the picturesque neighborhood of Kensington, The Copthorne Tara Hotel London is the city’s fifth largest hotel and a popular destination for all types of visitors.
Andrei Ticau, the current Rooms Division Manager, has been with the property for five years and fully understands the challenges that come with providing a great guest experience to a huge volume of guests.
“With more than 800 rooms, our team has to think strategically about how we can provide the best guest experience possible,” said Ticau. “And this often means using technology to make tangible positive impact on the guest experience, such as shorten queues at the front desk.”
Ticau pointed to the need for modern technology solutions that are designed to improve the guest experience as the reason the team at The Copthorne Tara Hotel became interested in Canary Technologies.
“We first looked at Canary as a way to improve the arrival experience at the property. Mobile check-in options are now fairly common in the hotel industry, and we found that Canary’s Contactless Check-In solution was by far the best one on the market for our guests,” said Ticau.
However, the Rooms Division Manager and his team soon realized that Canary could help them improve the guest experience in a variety of ways — and increase revenue at the same time.
At The Copthorne Tara Hotel, 300 arrivals in a day is considered perfectly normal.
But when that number goes up to 500 or 600 arrivals in a day, Ticau and his team lean heavily on Canary Check-In to reduce queues at the front desk and streamline the experience for their guests.
“Nobody wants to stand in line long once they’ve arrived at their hotel. And Canary helps us make sure our guests don’t have to,” he noted.
For a specific example of how Canary helps Ticau and his team reduce queues and improve the guest experience, recalled the recent arrival of a large group of guests that, uniquely, had to pay individually at the front desk.
“We recently had a group stay at the hotel that had booked around 350 bedrooms all arriving on the same day, paying individually,” said the Rooms Division Manager. “Without Canary, this would have been a real challenge for us to manage on top of our normal volume of arrivals. But since we use Contactless Check-In, we were able to prepare all of our guests’ keys in advance.”
Ticau said Canary significantly reduced the amount of time each guest had to spend at the front desk and, as a result, the day went smoothly.
However, guests aren’t the only ones to benefit from The Copthorne Tara Hotel’s adoption of Canary Check-In.
“In addition to streamlining the arrival experience, Canary enables us to capture accurate guest contact information, like emails and phone numbers. Guests can also opt in to receive our marketing materials and offers,” said Ticau. “It’s a great feature that helps us stay connected with our guests.”
Traditionally at The Copthorne Tara Hotel London, front desk agents were asked to push upsell options and packages when guests checked-in — and they still do. However, the property now also uses Canary’s Upsells solution to easily drive ancillary revenue.
“It’s basically free money,” said Ticau. “As guests go through the contactless check-in process, they can select room upgrades and other upsells entirely on their own without front desk agents needing to do anything.” He continued, “Last month, we had £10,000 in upsell requests.”
As a veteran hotelier who is focused on the guest experience above all, Ticau also sees an additional value to easily offering upsell packages in this way.
“Upselling is one thing that hotels should really master,” he said. “Yes, it’s a way to make more money per guest, but it’s also a way to improve the guest experience and leave an outstanding impression on people that stay at the property. If you have 50 guests that choose to upgrade from a Standard Room on the first floor to a Club Room on the twelfth floor, then you’re likely to have 50 happier guests.”
Ticau stated that Canary Checkout has helped his housekeeping team work more effectively to ensure more rooms are available earlier for new guests.
“For example, when air crews stay with us, they often show up early in the morning,” he said. “This used to be a challenge because if the hotel was fully booked the night before, it was hard for me to guarantee them a room because we didn’t have a good idea of how early rooms would be available.”
However, with Canary Checkout the staff at the Copthorne now knows which guests are intending to leave at 6am and can prioritize turning those rooms.
“Canary helps us ensure we always have as many rooms as possible ready for guests, whenever they arrive,” said Ticau.
Additionally, the Rooms Division Manager stated that the guest review feature inside Canary Checkout is very important as it allows his team to quickly deal with any issues that arise at the property.
“The Copthorne Tara Hotel receives lots of 5-star reviews, and of course, we’re very pleased to see them come in,” said Ticau. “However, the real value this feature provides to our team is it enables us to monitor guest feedback for any issues that need to be addressed immediately, such as an out-of-order coffee maker or problem with a room’s air conditioning.”
Ticau said that he, his team and The Copthorne Tara Hotel London’s guests have all had nothing but positive and enjoyable experiences with the Canary platform.
“It’s very simple to use the platform. Very straightforward,” he said. "And the training sessions are very helpful for onboarding new team members. Canary’s Customer success team has been great to work with and we’re very much looking forward to implementing more of their features and solutions soon.”
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