Ramada Jarvis hikes e-spend

Ramada Jarvis is to spend the majority of its marketing budget online within two years, as it steps up its commitment to digital.

The hotel chain spends about a quarter of its budget online but this proportion is set to increase sharply.

“I can see it will easily reach half or more. It’s doubled in the past two years and it will again,” says director of marketing Calum Russell. “We’ve been aggressively pushing the online proposition to our customers. We’ve started to use lots of Web activity to get the message across.”

The hotel group has 45 hotels around the UK. It is planning a major marketing push in the autumn to support a refit programme. This will be a fully integrated campaign involving online, offline and in-hotel marketing. Russell says it was attracted by the cost-effectiveness and trackability of online marketing. It claims to have an 85% open rate on e-mails.

Ramada Jarvis uses RMG Connect, part of the JWT group, for its e-mail marketing, and digital specialist Guava for the rest of its online activity. Its lead agency is Oxford-based JJ.