A guest who was called on Tuesday books a room on Friday. Was that the programme, or would they have come anyway? Without a method for answering that, an owner has no basis for deciding whether to continue, and the team making the calls has no way to show its work. Attribution is that method. It costs little and has to be in place before calling starts.
Five measures
- 1
A dedicated booking line
Outbound bookings and call-backs go to a number used only by the campaign, separate from the property's public line.
- 2
An offer code
Every booking made under the programme carries a code keyed into the booking system, so it can be reported from the property's own records.
- 3
Redemptions tied to the campaign
Each reward redeemed traces back to a call, which shows the cost of the programme alongside its results.
- 4
A baseline
Repeat-guest bookings are recorded for each property for a period before calling begins. This is the reference that later results are compared with.
- 5
A weekly report
The same figures every week, per property, so trends are visible and nothing is reconstructed after the fact.
Incremental and not
The useful question is whether the room would have been empty otherwise. A booking the programme produces on a quiet midweek night adds a guest the property would not have had. A booking on a weekend that was going to sell out replaces another guest. Both are counted, and they are worth very different amounts.
This is why occupancy by property and season belongs in the analysis. It is also a reason to aim offers at the periods when rooms are available. An offer aimed at quiet periods produces bookings that are more clearly additional.
What the weekly report shows
- Calls made and guests reached
- Guests who agreed to hear the offer
- Stays booked, and the room nights they represent
- Rewards redeemed
- Inbound calls answered and missed
- Themes from the survey answers
Read in order, these describe the chain from dialing to a booked night. If results are weak, the chain shows where: a list that reaches few people, an offer few accept, or interest that does not turn into bookings. Each has a different remedy.
What to settle before go-live
The first 30 days measure the rates along that chain. They cannot be known in advance for a particular property and list. The measure of success for the pilot should therefore be defined as a method before calling starts and given its target once the early figures are in. Setting a target earlier means guessing.
The owner's inputs
Some of the picture can only come from the owner: how full each property is by season, how long guests typically stay, and what a redeemed reward involves. Providing these makes the report a judgement about the programme as a whole. Without them it is only a count of calls.
In practice
Put in the pilot agreement: the dedicated line, the offer code, the baseline period, the content of the weekly report and the date on which the success measure will be set.