A Storied Hotel in the Heart of Canada’s Capital
As the only independently-owned hotel in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa, the Lord Elgin maintains an air of distinction befitting its often dignified guests. Built in 1941, the hotel has become a beloved landmark of Ottawa’s downtown core. It’s also locally-owned by Ottawa business luminary Jeff Gillin—another reason for its beloved status among locals and visitors alike. Its rooms and facilities nod to the building’s art deco origins while offering the finest modern amenities, including onsite restaurant, Grill 41.
The Challenge
We’ve had the pleasure of working with Lord Elgin Hotel since 2014, helping them evolve with an often-changing digital landscape. However, 2020 presented a particular challenge for the property: the COVID-19 pandemic decimated business travel, a staple of their customer base, and they made the decision to close the property for much of 2020 and 2021. Not only was their business in peril at ground level, but their digital presence also stood to suffer if it was left to stagnate as long as the hotel was closed.
The Results
Having built a strong working relationship with the Lord Elgin team led by Ann, their Director of Sales and Marketing and our primary contact, we put together a plan to help Lord Elgin weather the storm without sacrificing all the hard work we had put into their digital presence over the years.
We were able to restructure their service plan with us to offer relief during these financially difficult times and start charting the course for recovery.
Paramount for this recovery plan was preparing to reopen the hotel, which was targeted for October 2021. Focusing on both organic and paid search strategy, we rolled out a reopening plan that exceeded their occupancy targets and delivered strong results across the board.
Since then, we’ve seen significant growth in nearly all of their key performance metrics. Comparing Jan-May 2022 vs. Jan-May 2019, we’ve seen overall website sessions grow by 25%, social revenue increase by 195% and a nearly 1200% increase in revenue from our French-language Google Ads campaign!
Google Ads in general have been performing exceptionally well for the property since reopening, peaking at a whopping 58:1 ROAS across the board in spring 2022. Major growth in competitive organic keywords has also been a strong KPI for the property, with significant gains in traffic from non-brand keywords..
Overall, we’ve seen an 84% increase in website-generated revenue when comparing May 2022 to May 2019, a trend we hope to see continue as Lord Elgin emerges from the pandemic stronger than ever.
Increase in social revenue
Increase in revenue from French Google Search campaign
Increase in website-generated revenue