Maximising Revenue Through the Holiday Season: A Discussion with D&D London and Corbin & King

SevenRooms’ General Manager of Europe, Danilo Mangano recently spoke with Tiffany Robinson, Marketing Director at D&D London and Hannah Berry, Director of Marketing and Communications at Corbin & King, for a webinar titled, Maximising Revenue Through The Holiday Season. Together, they discussed what it takes to maximise revenue during a redefined holiday season. Throughout the conversation, they touched on a wide array of topics, including:

• How to reduce no-shows through the careful incorporation of technology
• Maximising revenue despite capacity restrictions
• COVID-19-related closures across the UK
• Leveraging guest data to execute on loyalty-building guest experiences

Read on to learn how these operators are incorporating new operational processes that increase revenue, their opinion on the importance of keeping guest safety top of mind through the use of online reservations and virtual waitlists, and implementing tech to meet new guest expectations.

Incorporating New Marketing Processes  

DM: How has your marketing strategy shifted in light of all the changes brought on by COVID-19? Have there been any surprisingly successful changes that you plan on adopting long-term? 

HB: As a company, Corbin & King is definitely more involved in communications during COVID than we normally would. Our founder Jeremy King has done a lot more press opportunities and spoken up for some of the challenges this industry has faced. Our social media presence has been more prevalent, resulting in our engagement massively increasing. At the end of the day, we’ve realized that our guests really want to hear from us. Although producing organic and natural content like videos is more time consuming, it definitely comes off as more authentic and results in higher engagement. We’ve also been involved in some unique marketing campaigns that yielded some great results and that we hope to continue with in the future.

Managing Your Reservation Books & Minimising No-Shows 

DM: What techniques has your group adopted in order to mediate covers and minimise no-shows? 

HB: I don’t think the general public understand the importance of cancelling reservations, or the fact that their cancelled tables get released back into our available inventory for other guests to book. At the end of the day, it has a big effect on restaurants. Taking measures like having people input their credit card information increases the likelihood of commitment and follow-through and decreases the chance of them not showing up for their reservation.

SevenRooms’ General Manager of Europe, Danilo Mangano and Tiffany Robinson, Marketing Director at D&D London and Hannah Berry, Director of Marketing and Communications at Corbin & King

The Benefit of Collecting Guest Data for Marketers     

DM: Guest data is becoming more and more important for restaurants. How do you leverage the data you collect in order to give guests the best experience you can offer?

TR: After joining SevenRooms, we have found value in learning more about our customers; what they consume, what they spend. Ultimately, we can reward the loyal customers identified from the data collected through SevenRooms, through our reward program, Club D&D. Rich data enables us as the operator to make targeted, custom recommendations. It’s also massively important to read aggregated feedback from customers from their previous experience so we can learn from that and apply it to future diners.

To hear more about what D&D London and Corbin & King are doing throughout the holiday season and beyond, please visit our Resource Center to watch the webinar.