Most guests don’t book on their first interaction. They explore your website, fill out a form, or call the reservations team — then vanish. For many hotels, that’s the end of the conversation. But for hospitality leaders, it’s just the beginning.
Lead nurturing bridges the gap between interest and booking. It combines automation, a Customer Data Platform, and human follow-up to guide every potential guest toward a direct reservation.
Hotels that master the right balance between digital efficiency and human touch are seeing measurable results — from faster conversions to higher lifetime value. Here’s how four properties lead the way.
Why lead nurturing matters for hotels
Every email, call, or website visit reveals intent. But without a structured lead nurture strategy, those signals go to waste.
Effective lead nurturing for hotels means:
- Following up automatically when a guest shows interest
- Equipping your call center or reservations team with context
- Maintaining a consistent brand voice across digital and human channels
- Turning lost leads into loyal guests and converting one-time stays into repeat revenue
Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa: automated lead nurture with empathy
Eau Palm Beach wanted to evolve from one-off promotional emails to personalized, data-driven guest journeys. Their goal: Build an automated lead nurture program that felt human and aligned with their reservations team.
How they did it
Using Revinate’s Guest Data Platform, the team created triggered campaigns for every key moment in the guest lifecycle:
- Cart-abandonment emails sent within hours of an unfinished booking
- Re-engagement journeys at 180 and 365 days of inactivity
- Cancellation recovery flows highlighting alternate dates or experiences
Automation ensured speed, but empathy made the difference. Each message mirrored the property’s five-star tone, while CRM tracking let the reservations team see exactly which guests had opened or clicked. Weekly cross-team syncs helped refine timing and content.
Results
- $33.5 million in direct email revenue
- 77% of database reached through automated nurturing
- 60% open rate and $89K in three months from cart abandonment emails
Eau Palm Beach proved that when automation and human follow-up work together, hotels can deliver personalization at scale.
La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club: human follow-up at digital speed
La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club discovered that many callers expressed interest but never booked. The delay between inquiry and follow-up was costing real revenue.
How they did it
They introduced a warm vs. cold lead nurture system inside their CRM. After every non-booking call:
- Warm leads — those showing intent — triggered a personalized email within one hour
- Cold leads received a softer, brand story message a few days later
Automation handled the timing; the content carried the human touch. Each email referenced the conversation (“Thanks for chatting with us about your upcoming getaway”) and included a direct booking link.
The reservations team could view open and click data, helping them prioritize callbacks to engaged leads.
Results
- 70% open rate and 13% CTR for warm leads
- 64% open rate for cold leads
- 275+ room nights booked in 12 months
By connecting automated emails with real-time human outreach, La Jolla turned quick follow-ups into long-term relationships.
The Meritage Resort & Spa: nurturing leads through loyalty and value
The Meritage Resort & Spa wanted to re-engage warm leads who had shown interest but never booked. Instead of applying pressure, they chose value-based nurturing, building trust first.
How they did it
Three days after a no-booking inquiry, guests received an automated yet personal email: an invitation to join the resort’s loyalty program.
The message focused on appreciation rather than urgency, offering 10% off and a welcome cocktail as perks. The CRM ensured that only “not booked” leads received the email, keeping the timing relevant and respectful.
Results
- 62% open rate, 10% CTR
- 72 room nights booked
- 3% conversion rate (vs. 2.2% regional average)
By aligning their CRM with automation, The Meritage Resort transformed simple follow-ups into an authentic loyalty experience — proving that empathy converts just as effectively as urgency.
Islamorada Resort Collection: connecting CRM data and call center teams
For Islamorada Resort Collection in the Florida Keys, the greatest opportunity lay in reconnecting their digital leads with the human voice. Working with Revinate and Dragonfly Strategists, the group rebuilt its call center operations to function as the heart of its lead-nurture strategy.
How they did it
All guest data (from web forms to email clicks) flowed into a unified CRM. When a new inquiry arrived, the system automatically created a task for a reservations agent. Before making the call, that agent could see the guest’s digital history: which campaign they’d opened, what room type they viewed, even whether they’d started a booking.
Training focused on consistency. Agents practiced mirroring the same tone guests experienced in digital communications: helpful, human, and on-brand.
Results
- $1 million in new bookings in just six weeks
- Higher average booking value through voice reservations
- Stronger collaboration between marketing and reservations teams
Islamorada showed that when technology empowers people — not replaces them — the voice channel becomes a powerful extension of digital nurturing.
Implementation blueprint for hotel lead nurturing
- Connect your CRM systems
Combine data from your website, marketing automation, and voice channels to create a single view of every lead.
- Design trigger-based journeys
Map out nurture flows for key moments: inquiry → no booking, cart abandonment, post-call follow-up, and re-engagement.
- Train for consistency
Teach reservations and marketing teams to use shared language, tone, and offers. A guest should feel the same warmth in an email as on a call.
- Align measurement
Review lead nurture metrics together: open rates, click-throughs, booking conversions, and incremental revenue from voice and email combined.
- Iterate continuously
Use data to refine timing, messaging, and segmentation. Automation isn’t “set and forget” — it’s “test and improve.”
Lessons from the field
- Speed attracts attention, personalization builds trust. La Jolla’s one-hour response succeeded because it was relevant, not robotic.
- CRM visibility turns agents into advisors. Eau Palm Beach empowered its reservations team with real-time insight into guest behavior.
- Value beats discounts. The Meritage Resort proved that a loyalty invitation can convert better than urgency tactics.
- Voice still wins. Islamorada’s million-dollar success shows that informed conversations convert at higher rates than self-service alone.
- Training keeps technology human. Consistent messaging across email and phone ensures guests experience true hospitality.
- Measure what matters. Look beyond open rates — track total revenue influenced by nurture flows and voice interactions.
The future of hotel lead nurture: empathy meets intelligence
As hotels adopt AI and smarter CRMs, lead nurturing will only grow more dynamic. Automation can detect intent and deliver perfectly timed follow-ups, while people add empathy, reassurance, and the authentic touch technology can’t replicate.
Hotels that master this human-digital balance will convert more inquiries into direct bookings and more first-time guests into lifelong advocates.
Join the Lead Nurture Campaigns track of Direct Booking Mastery
Join other hoteliers in Revinate’s Direct Booking Mastery Certification, and learn how to combine CRM data, automation, and human connection to modernize your hotel’s lead management — and turn every inquiry into an opportunity.
About Revinate
Revinate is a direct booking platform that leads the hospitality industry in driving direct revenue and increased profitability.
Our products and our people combine to give hoteliers the superpowers they need to crush their goals. With Revinate, hoteliers shift share away from OTAs and drive tangible results across an individual property or a portfolio. Our industry-leading, AI-powered customer data platform collects, unifies, and synthesizes data to give hoteliers a foundational advantage.
Hoteliers gain critical intelligence — guest lifetime spend, stay preferences, ancillary revenue, and more. With Revinate’s Rich Guest Profiles™ data, hoteliers don’t need to guess who their most profitable guests are or struggle to drive conversions across email, voice, messaging, and digital channels.
Revinate’s direct booking platform and omnichannel communication technology powers 950+ million Rich Guest Profiles across 12,500+ hotels to drive over $17.2 billion in direct revenue.
Media Team
Media team | Revinate
+1 415 671 4703
Revinate, Inc.
