“Shane Cleghorn is the Ecommerce Manager at G6 Hospitality for the North American region. And unless you work in hotel e-commerce, you may not be familiar with content scores, but they play a huge role in the visibility and demand for hotels today.“
In this case study, Shane explains what content scores are, and how he managed these at scale with Shiji Group for G6 Hospitality, the parent company of economy lodging leaders Motel 6 and Studio 6 brands. When Shane Cleghorn was recruited to G6 Hospitality in 2019, one of his responsibilities was making sure the brand’s photography scores improved.
Limitations in Visual Content Distribution
It was a huge job. “We needed to overhaul our process, procuring professional photos and tagging them appropriately – and that’s a ton of work,” he told us. “For example, a Motel 6 location has a photo of a queen bed and I upload that to Expedia. Expedia doesn’t know it’s a queen bed. It’s up to us to dictate what the image is. I needed a way to tag images, whether it was a queen bed, micro-fridge, or non-smoking room. I had to match up all the photos with the correct room type.” Doing all of this for 1,400+ hotels represented a lot of work for a small team. “Our team is small but mighty. We not only run the website but also all of our content, including photography. We needed to bring in extra help with the details of tagging and making sure that photos were reviewed from a brand perspective before getting uploaded.” The brand’s quality scores suffered as a result, dropping to just 66 on a 100-point scale in 2021.
“It was hurting the demand for our business quite a bit”. G6 had been an IcePortal customer (a Shiji Distribution Solutions product) for several years, and Shane reached out to them for help and to understand what it would take to get their content scores up. After speaking with the Shiji Team, it became clear that the Shiji SmartX for Visual Distribution solution – an offering designed to reduce fixed labor costs, maximize efficiency, and unlock the potential of hotel brands on distribution channels by providing optimization services – would be the best fit. “We ended up working out a deal where the Shiji’s SmartX Team did the curation for six months. I knew they could do the job from their track record as an organization with us over the years,” Shane said.
Working with Shiji’s SmartX Team to improve content scoring
From the start, one thing that Shane appreciated in working with Shiji was how he was in control of the whole project. “They even gave us the proverbial keys back halfway through the project and asked, ‘How are we doing? Do we need to make any adjustments? Do you want to take the project over at this point or have us keep going?’ For me, it was an easy choice. They were doing terrific work and beating my expectations.” “This project had been a tedious, daunting task for us. Shiji knew what the challenge was and how to solve it. They made it simple for us. I didn’t have to put a lot of time thinking about it. “If I went to a generic outsourcing company, I would have had to explain the whole scenario and all the background context you need to know to finish the job. I thought about doing that but quickly realized it would be much more efficient to work with Shiji, who I believe are the experts in the space. It was an easy choice for me.”
The build, buy, or partner decision
With so much conversation about talent in the hospitality industry, I asked Shane what his advice would be to other people in his position at other companies on partnering as he did and getting expert help outside his team – and he was a strong advocate for partnering with experts like Shiji in cases like this. “When working with us, the Shiji SmartX Team was an integrated member of our team. It was a critical piece of our business. We knew we wanted to get to these things eventually but had to prioritize more critical projects. I’ve been working with Shiji for a long time and knew what they were capable of.” Today, the results speak for themselves.
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A 30-point jump in quality scores to near-perfection (with time to focus on priority projects)
The results of this project exceeded Shane’s already-high expectations.
“Shiji was able to get us way higher than we expected. We ended up with a 96% quality score at the end of March 2023.”
Before the project with Shiji Group began, 332 G6 properties had a perfect room type score. Upon completion, an additional 776 G6 properties achieved the perfect 100% room type score. Additionally, 43% of G6 properties previously had ‘strong room type scores’ (80% and above). Upon completion, a full 94% of G6 properties reached an 80% score and above. But that wasn’t all. “Shiji’s SmartX and IcePortal saved me and my team a lot of time, and the efficiencies we gained allowed us to tackle projects we could only manage internally.” The result? A happier, more productive team – and a better experience for their customers, all thanks to Shiji’s SmartX solution. “It’s been good for everyone involved.”
