Luxury Starts Behind the Scenes: 90% Fewer Cancellations and 42% More Sales at Eden Roc Cap Cana

Travelers don't just want vacations anymore. Spa visitors aren't merely looking for a beauty treatment. Today's sophisticated consumers are no longer buying getaways—they’re booking premium experiences.

At Eden Roc Cap Cana, we offer a boutique hotel and spa experience to international visitors and local customers alike. Our 32 stand-alone luxury suites feature private pools for an exquisite in-suite wellness experience. Twelve beachfront suites offer the ultimate romantic getaway for ocean lovers, and our villas provide complete privacy for larger groups.

Our Eden Roc Wellness & Spa facility is the first in the world to partner with luxury skincare brand Natura Bissé. We offer exclusive treatments like the Diamond Experience Rose massage. Combining the exfoliating power of diamond dust with the aromatherapeutic properties of Damask rose oil, it is the ultimate skin renewal treatment.

Luxury Should Start Behind the Scenes

We have always offered a premium experience to our customers. Unfortunately, we didn't always apply a luxe approach to our internal operations. When I joined Eden Roc Cana in 2018, we were using Excel to book rooms and spa treatments. It was chaotic, to say the least.

We had no real customer records. It was far too easy to delete a booking by mistake, and it was way too complicated to cancel or reschedule a booking on request. There was no long-term view of our operations, and my staff was afraid of overbooking because we couldn't look ahead to see what was available and what wasn't.

If I were to use an analogy, I would compare this state of affairs to a car in a foreign country without a GPS. We didn’t know where we were going. We weren't using the latest technology to oversee our operations in a way that ensured timely scheduling, accurate inventory control, and outstanding customer service.

As Eden Roc's Spa & Wellness Director, I saw a lot of missed opportunities. I also recognized that our organizational disarray was having an impact on our guest experience. I thought about implementing the booking software I'd used at my previous job, but it felt like a stopgap because it was lacking in features and wasn't especially user-friendly.

From Zero to 60 in a Few Weeks

I couldn't settle on half-measures. We were starting from scratch, so I needed a comprehensive solution that could take Eden Roc Cap Cana from the proverbial zero to 60 in a few weeks. At this point, I started to think about Book4Time. I'd met their team at ISPA Las Vegas a few years ago, and I was impressed by the product. However, I didn’t explore it further because my previous employer never gave me the go-ahead to implement a new booking platform.

In the absence of any such platform at Eden Roc Cap Cana, I took a deep dive into possible solutions and—once again—found myself leaning toward Book4Time. It offered the perfect combination of all-in-one functionality, ease-of-use, and excellent support.

José Sifuentes was my point man at Book4Time from the very beginning, and he answered all my pre- and post-sale questions. He took the time to explain how the product worked, and once we’d selected it as our new booking and management platform, he followed up on our progress with regular phone calls. As a bonus, José is a native Spanish speaker, and it is refreshing to deal with a tech company in our language.

Other vendors claim to offer an all-in-one wellness and spa booking solution, but Book4Time is the only platform that provides everything out of the box. Built-in functions include appointment booking; marketing and retention; revenue management; guest experience and CRM; inventory management; and security and privacy.

Book4Time also integrates with most Property Management Systems (PMS) and payment gateways on the market. With anyone else, you're looking at costly add-ons, custom coding, and a steep learning curve. With Book4Time, we were up and running in no time. Excel was history in a matter of days. 

Online Training and Increased Accountability

Our journey began with online training. You can learn the basics of Book4Time in a couple of hours. The web-based lessons are highly interactive and easy-to-understand, but José and his team were available to provide personal assistance when things got too technical.

Book4Time is so intuitive that users can figure out most of its functions on their own once they've completed the introductory training. However, my team was a little hesitant at first. They were so accustomed to doing things the hard way in Excel that Book4Time felt unnatural to them. It took them a week to understand that our new platform was easier to use and a lot more reliable.

The first big change after we implemented Book4Time was increased employee accountability. With Excel, it was impossible to tell who booked an appointment, who changed it, or who canceled it. With Book4Time, every staff member has a unique login that allows us to see a history of the entire booking process.

Let’s face it: People sometimes make mistakes. With Book4Time, we can now correct employee errors and prevent their recurrence by showing team members what went wrong. The booking module also makes it easier to review all the details before confirming a reservation. Trying to sort all this out in Excel was a nightmare. There was no easy way to track customers and transactions. Now, we can fix a mistake with a click. 

Increasing Customer Loyalty and Reducing Missed Appointments

Book4Time's marketing and retention tools have also helped transform the way we do promotions at Eden Roc Cap Cana. For example, I like to create personalized coupons offering discounted spa and wellness treatments to members of groups that have pre-booked their hotel stays.

These electronic coupons can be redeemed online and are a proven moneymaker. People are more inclined to look up the therapeutic benefits of our spa and wellness treatments and then book a session when we present them with a personalized offer.

We also use Book4Time to reward our most loyal customers. On top of our international visitors, Eden Roc Cap Cana caters to local clientele. At the beginning of every month, I look through our records and reward the previous month’s most frequent customer with a complimentary spa treatment. 

In the year we have been using these Book4Time features, we've seen a big impact. Before Book4Time, our clients couldn't book online. This meant they called and we didn't make them reserve with their credit card. And because sending reminders was incredibly time-consuming, we often didn't do it. The end result was that we frequently had no-shows. With Book4Time, our clients reserve online and the system automatically sends them appointment reminders. It's a better experience for the guests and less work for us. As a result, we've reduced our cancellations by 90%. 

On the sales front, we've increased sales by 42% since using Book4Time. There are a few factors in play here. Since we have better control of our inventory, we've been able to drive more sales on the retail side. Due to our newfound marketing capabilities, we can drive repeat business by offering those incentives I mentioned. But a big part of this increase comes down to confidence. When we scheduled with Excel, we just didn't have the insights needed to optimize scheduling. Our staff were afraid over overbooking, so they underbooked. This is what happens when you don't have the proper visibility. But since we can fine-tune and optimize our schedule, our staff aren't worried about overbooking. We can maximize everyone's time. 

We've made these tremendous strides, and we've only begun to scratch the surface. In the coming months, we’ll be adopting more of the platform’s features and integrations as we further explore its functionalities. 

Book4Time Puts Me in the Driver’s Seat

Thanks to Book4Time, my staff and I are spending less time dealing with administrative, accounting, staffing, and inventory issues, and more time dealing directly with customers.

As the spa's director, I can use Book4Time's robust reporting features to analyze sales and trends. In the past, the best I could do was keep up with inventory levels. I can now create new services, stock new products, and optimize staffing to enhance the visitor experience.

With Book4Time, I feel like I'm in the driver's seat of a luxury vehicle. I have power steering and a sophisticated engine to move me forward. Rear-view cameras show where I've been. My GPS provides directions, and an intelligent dashboard allows me to see that all the car's systems are working correctly. It’s time to hit the road.