While doing research last year in preparation for revamping its company website, Gaylord Hotels came across some “eye-opening” results. Although 80 percent of Gaylord’s business comes from meetings and conventions, 95 percent of visitors to its website were individual leisure travelers or meeting attendees, and not meeting planners. As a result, Gaylord revamped its website to batter capture those online visitors, but also altered its customer relationship management strategies to better focus on the core group business.

In late February, a new website was launched to give leisure travelers a more engaging experience to match what they’d experience in visits to the mega meeting resort properties in Nashville; Grapevine, TX: Kissimmee, FL; and National Harbor, MD, while still providing meeting planners with what they need.

“From an artistic view we knew the one thing we had to do was demonstrate the uniqueness of Gaylord properties,” says Rich Maradik, Gaylord Hotels’ senior vice president and chief marketing officer. “We couldn’t look like everybody else. When our guests come to a Gaylord property they can have many different experiences, all very personal, but they all leave saying, ‘Wow, this is unlike any place I’ve ever been to before.’ If the website doesn’t show that, we would underperform.”

The new site features an “experience” toolbar, allowing guests to visualize each property’s unique features. It also offers several 360-degree virtual tours of the four resorts’ atriums, facilities and guestrooms; “Sunny G” hotspots, or links that elaborate on the facilities; an easy-to-use booking function with instant confirmation; interviews with Gaylord Hotels’ STARS (employees) and video testimonials from guests; information on vacation package offers and events; and details on nearby attractions. The meeting planner isn’t overlooked either: A tool kit provides customizable attendance boosters, floor-plan images and an instant quote request form for each property.

Gaylord was also careful not to overdo the technology. For example, there is audio available on the site, but the music doesn’t automatically turn on. The user must hit the unmute button because “most views are during business hours,” explains Maradik. All the video, of the properties, STARs and guests, was freshly shot in the fall.

The results have been encouraging. Since launching the new site, Maradik says Gaylord has seen a boost in traffic and conversions, and the mix of online bookings is well ahead of what was projected. The company’s leisure numbers are up as a whole.

As part of the in-depth research, and just as important as the new website, Gaylord also revamped its approach to customer relationship management. “CRM means different things to different people,” Maradik says. “To some it’s a loyalty program or to others it’s how I treat my customers at the front desk. We define it as how do you learn a whole bunch about your customers and how do you take that knowledge and derive incremental profit from it.”

Knowing customers obviously helps on the leisure side, but Maradik says many overlook CRM practices on the group side. “When I say group I mean more on the pure sales side of life,” he says. “How do we take our sales force of 125 people and best focus them against the universe of meeting decision makers and planners? There are 30,000 to 40,000 contacts out there in the group sales area, so the question is understanding which types of groups are your most profitable and why they are, and what would it look like if you changed your mix of groups and how you could derive more profitability if you change that mix. And then deploy your sales force to achieve that mix.”