Located in the north of England in the historic city of Newcastle Upon Tyne, Crowne Plaza Newcastle is a 251-room, full-service hotel with a restaurant, gin bar, spa, leisure club, lounge and conference facilities. Managing this wide range of amenities creates operational complexity, but it also gives the team multiple ways to connect with guests.
After switching to self-management, the team set out to make the most of those opportunities by improving the guest journey while creating new revenue streams. We spoke with Director of Operations Antony Hazel and Director of Revenue Kristina Skaburskyte about why they chose Canary to support those goals.
Before Canary, every guest question ran through the front desk, whether guests wanted dinner reservations, spa bookings or directions to the gin bar. That volume overwhelmed staff and left guests waiting for answers. Canary’s Guest Messaging moved that flow to SMS and WhatsApp so hotel staff can easily manage conversations at scale.
“People want to communicate digitally instead of talking on the phone,” said Antony. Kristina added, “With this, you ask the question, you get the answer, you get it actioned right away. Our guests and our staff love it.”
Crowne Plaza Newcastle’s size made its amenities easy to miss — guests who went straight to their rooms were often unaware of what the property had to offer. The team now uses the broadcast feature in Canary’s Guest Messaging to send segment-specific promotions for the restaurants, spa and activities. Now, the hotel is driving more revenue from the amenities they already have while delighting guests with personalization.
“If you check in and go straight to your room, you might not even realise the gin bar is there,” said Antony. “Now, we can send special offers to different guest segments, like sending corporate travelers offers built around dining allowances. That’s what Canary helps us do.”
Before Canary, the front desk manually offered add-ons at check-in. If staff didn’t ask, or a guest didn’t know what was available, the property missed out on revenue. Since adopting Canary’s Dynamic Upsells , Crowne Plaza Newcastle has generated over £20,000 in requested upsell revenue (~$27,000 USD at time of writing) by automating the process of offering the right upsells to the right guest at the right time.
“Room upsells do the best in terms of revenue,” said Kristina. “Our suites, early check-ins and breakfast packages are the most popular, but everything adds up to create incremental income we weren’t getting before.”
