SMALL Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH) has seen sustained positive growth for the first half of 2011, its 20th anniversary year. Indicators of this upward trend include an impressive 32 per cent increase in revenue to date, compared to the same period last year, a 13.5 per cent increase in reservations and the addition of 15 new hotels to its unrivalled portfolio from January to June 2011.
“The past six months have been a busy time for SLH as we celebrate 20 years in the business and strive to build on our success for the future. We are delighted to see that business is continuing its strong upward curve as seen in 2010 and feel that our commitment to quality and innovation has ensured that we do not rest on our laurels but constantly look for new ways of offering our guests the very best luxury travel experiences around the world,” commented Paul Kerr, chief executive officer, SLH.
“Key areas of focus for us over the last six months have been The Club of SLH, which we have developed to offer even more benefits to our loyal guests, and our social media activity which has really expanded this year to help us communicate better with guests and agents.”
SLH is now offering travel trade partners the opportunity to add value for their clients with each hotel stay they book, with new enhanced benefits now available to members of The Club of Small Luxury Hotels of the World. Agents can now offer customers the chance to earn complimentary nights, free room upgrades, special rates and late check-out as well as a range of other benefits when they become part of The Club of SLH. Membership now exists in three tiers – Special, Love and Honoured, with the benefits increasing the more a client stays at an SLH property. All Club bookings are commissionable. These enhancements to The Club of SLH have boosted its success – there has been a 36 per cent growth in reservations by Club members in 2011 to date when compared to 2010, and a huge 178 per cent increase in bookings of special Club member offers. The total number of Club members is 115,000, an increase of 135 per cent versus the same period in 2010.
SLH has found that its members are frequent business travellers, with more than a third of members travelling four or more times for business per year. They stay an average of 11-30 nights per year in hotels, and 22 per cent make over 10 trips abroad per year. Nearly two-thirds of members have an income of over £60,000 ($95,300) and one third earn over £125,000 ($198,500). Currently 20 per cent of Club members are from the UK.
SLH continues to build on its social media outreach, expanding brand awareness and methods of communication with guests and agents internationally via Facebook, Twitter and other online tools. The brand now has almost 40,000 fans on Facebook with a steadily growing fan base from around the world. Additionally, SLH now has over 7,000 Twitter followers who are regularly updated with the latest news, offers and tips, and nearly 87,000 iPad and iPhone App downloads to date - these figures continue to grow month by month. Since 2005, SLH has also seen a 14 per cent increase in electronic bookings.
Since starting with 75 hotels in 1991, SLH has expanded by 464 hotels (+600 per cent) in more than 70 countries. The brand now has 324 properties in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), 95 properties in America and 120 properties in Asia Pacific (APAC). Growth in Asia has been particularly strong, illustrated when looking at the distribution of properties when SLH first launched in 1991, when APAC made up only two per cent of all SLH hotels. Currently 26 per cent properties are country house hotels, 41 per cent properties are resorts and 33 per cent are city centre hotels.
SLH’s dedicated travel agents’ website, www.slh.com/travelagents continues to be an invaluable source for the travel trade. 65 per cent of all reservations made through SLH’s booking channels are made by agents using the dedicated GDS code “LX” for Luxury.