How WestCord Hotels turned pre-arrival communication into a revenue-generating guest journey

WestCord Hotels, together with 100procent and Deployteq, transformed the period between booking and arrival into a fully personalised guest journey across 15 unique hotel brands. By combining guest data, marketing automation and hotel-specific content, WestCord achieved a 712% increase in guest engagement, 1100% growth in upsell performance, and reduced pressure on front-office teams. The project was recognised with the Golden Case Award 2026, presented at Deployteq Connect 2026 and featured in Twinkle Nederland as a customer success story.

For most hospitality brands, the guest journey starts at check-in.

For WestCord Hotels, it starts much earlier.

Together with marketing automation partner 100procent, WestCord set out to transform the period between booking and arrival into a meaningful part of the guest experience. What began as a single pilot project evolved into an award-winning automation programme spanning fifteen hotels, delivering stronger guest engagement, increased ancillary revenue and a more efficient operation.

The Challenge

WestCord operates fifteen unique hotels, each with its own identity, audience and guest expectations.

Yet before this project, guests largely received the same pre-arrival communication regardless of which hotel they were visiting. A guest travelling to the Wadden Islands received essentially the same information as someone visiting Amsterdam or Rotterdam. Communication was primarily practical, delivered shortly before arrival, and missed opportunities to inspire guests, answer questions proactively and present relevant offers.

WestCord wanted to change that.

The team defined three key objectives:

From Booking to Experience

A booking confirmation shouldn’t be the end of the conversation. It should be the beginning of the guest journey.

Instead of waiting until a few days before arrival to communicate with guests, WestCord designed a personalised pre-arrival programme focused on three goals:

Building Personalisation Across Fifteen Hotels

Creating personalised journeys for one hotel is challenging enough.

Creating them for fifteen hotels, each with its own branding, tone of voice and guest requirements, is a different challenge entirely.

To make the project scalable, WestCord and 100procent started with a pilot at Hotel Jakarta Amsterdam. Together with marketing teams, hotel managers and reception staff, they identified the information guests needed most and mapped the ideal guest journey. Once the pilot was validated, the approach was gradually expanded to the remaining hotels. [twinklemagazine.nl]

Using reservation data and integrations with operational systems, guest communications could now adapt based on:

The result was a framework that remained scalable while preserving the unique identity of each WestCord property.

Turning Relevance into Revenue

Historically, guests could purchase extras such as welcome packages, beverages or special experiences, but these products were often only available if guests actively requested them.

The new approach changed this completely.

Using Deployteq, WestCord could present relevant offers at precisely the right moment in the guest journey. Instead of promoting upgrades immediately after a booking, guests received tailored recommendations closer to their arrival date, when they were already looking forward to their stay and more likely to enhance the experience.
This led to dramatic growth in supplementary revenue while simultaneously improving the guest experience.

The Results

Looking Ahead

WestCord is further expanding its personalisation capabilities and exploring new ways to tailor communications based on guest preferences, travel motivations and behavioural data. The vision remains the same: to ensure every guest receives the right message, at the right moment, throughout their journey.