2024 | MAY / JUNE ISSUE
RIOJA WINE
HOTEL & RESTAURANT TIMES
WedPro System Wedding Dates’ main product is their WedPro system – a cloud-based piece of software designed for hotels to work smarter, not harder, in managing weddings and increasing their conversion rates from enquiries.
“The original idea for Wedding Dates was for a wedding directory site,” says Ciara, “but the unique selling point was the availability, so I really had to bring the hoteliers on the journey with me.
Ciara Crossan, founder of Wedding Dates
Wedding Dates’ DESTINY IN GOOD HANDS
T
he highly successful website Wedding Dates was launched in 2008 by Cork native Ciara Crossan. Having started as a service aimed more at consumers, it has become a unique resource that’s of even greater benefit to hotels. The noughties were still relatively early days in the evolution of businesses on the Internet and it was still quite novel to have something such as wedding services online.
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“I remember going to the IHF annual conference in 2009 and I hosted a little workshop – all about social media and Facebook. I had a guest speaker talking about this to a large number of hoteliers. They were all going, ‘ Nobody’s going to be friends on Facebook with a hotel! This is rubbish!’ And look where we are now 16 years later…” It was the relationship forged then, that involved bringing hotels on that journey of evolution, that was very important in helping both her and the hotels to understand consumer needs in a fast-changing market, Ciara says. And over the last 16 years, there have been many
changes to the average Irish wedding. As ever, lots of the trends are coming from America, such as the rehearsal dinner and the Day Two barbecue. When she first started, weddings of over 200 guests were a normal occurrence. We’re now in the era of the boutique-sized wedding – a trend that was hardened by Covid. Couples are also getting married older than they used to and they’re paying for it; meaning that they decide the guest list, with much less input from parents than used to be the case.
“Weddings are now two or three-day events, with Friday being the day of choice, rather than Saturday.”
WEDDING DATES
HOTEL & RESTAURANT TIMES
About 22,000 couples get married each year and each couple consults, on average, five different venues before making their choice. From the hotel’s point of view, the average conversion rate from visiting the hotel to actually booking the wedding is 30%. One in three couples walking through the door will book their wedding there.
“So if a hotel wants to do 100 weddings, they need to do 300 showarounds,” says Ciara. “And to get 300 showaround appointments, you need to have about 1,000 enquiries.”
All of that translates into a lot of administrative work when one considers the various other ‘touch points’ that stem from that activity – follow-up emails and phone calls and keeping track of the potential clients’ needs and queries. Ciara’s cloud-based system steps in and fully integrates with hotels’ systems to look after much of that heavy lifting – something that most hotels aren’t capable of doing on their own. “We’ve a company that started using WedPro and in the first year and they saved 200 hours on email administration alone.”
“They were coming from a zero base – they had three weddings on the books. It was a new venue launching. In the first three months working with us, they went from 3 to 36 weddings on the books.” Software doesn’t perform magic, Ciara points out, but what it does do is to bring a new level of efficiency and organisation that translates into a very smart and prompt service to people making enquiries.
The statistical data that the Ciara says that hotels that system provides is another provide a thoroughly good invaluable service that would service can charge more otherwise not be accessible and people are willing to to hotels – ending up buried, pay it when the service is very as Ciara says, in email good and thoughtful correspondence. “We had a and exceptional hotel that came to and the costs us, recommendare traed by another “The potential nsparhotel,” says customers feel that love ent. Ciara.
and they respond by giving their business to the hotel.” “Value for money is another important factor in all of this.”
The provision of wedding services has become more specialised and it’s not something that every hotel can or wants to do. WWW.HOTELANDRESTAURANTTIMES.IE
MAY / JUNE ISSUE | 2024
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