How Duda helped a leading hospitality software company expand their product offering and revenue

By partnering with Duda, this vertical SaaS platform successfully introduced an integrated, conversion-focused website building solution to their customers–without the challenges of in-house development and maintenance.

• 1k
  Over 1k SEO-optimized sites launched
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  Clients increased direct booking rates by over 25%
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  $100k in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
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  Website build time reduced by 600%

Facilitating technology adoption for hospitality SMBs

The hospitality sector historically lagged in adopting new technologies, a fact that was evident when this vertical SaaS platform originated over a decade ago. Its founders, frequent travelers, realized that the large chains had access to technology that simply wasn't available to small and medium-sized hospitality businesses (SMBs).

This was a huge opportunity. In the hospitality industry, SMBs represent 87% of every property on the planet, including small independent hotels, vacation rentals, and other types of lodging.

So they decided to create a booking engine that would give small and medium-sized hospitality businesses the opportunity to win more clients. They quickly realized that the next step was to become a multi-product SaaS business and offer a property management system (PMS), where the booking engine would be integrated.

"Building websites is not our core business"

Growth for this SaaS platform has been the result of acquisition and product led expansion. As a result of these strategic moves, the platform has become vital to their customers' small businesses.

Owning the control points of their customers’ businesses allowed them to identify new opportunities to create real value for their customers. At this point, the next clear step was to help their SMB customers with the demand generation side of their businesses, driving more bookings and revenue.

They knew that the guest hospitality experience often starts on the web, and establishing a strong online presence is crucial for most hospitality businesses.

The foundation for this presence is a high-performing website.

However, as one of the directors explained, "Building websites was not our core business, so we didn't want to dedicate a bunch of resources and time to building the technology or managing several website building systems."

Easily integrating Duda's white-label platform

After evaluating various website builders, it became clear that Duda was the best choice and partner for their needs. "We chose Duda because of its ability to integrate with our primary software. Our clients can log into one place, open up their website and manage it there. So it's all about Duda being a white label solution," explains the product director.

He adds that with Duda he doesn't have to worry about plugins, security updates, and other technical aspects of dealing with website services that can really become a problem.

Because of his background in SEO, he was very aware that websites need to be optimized, fast, and responsive–and that these are table stakes in terms of getting into Google’s first result pages. With a different solution, he would have to manage all these things instead of relying on a partner like Duda.

Publishing industry-specific websites at scale

Since partnering with Duda, this vertical SaaS platform has published nearly 1,000 websites for their clients (and counting). These are beautiful hospitality websites that are focused on driving conversions and are optimized for search.

The websites are built using exclusive hotel website templates created by the company's design team using Duda's templates and sections features. The templates have all the functionality needed to create the best user experience for hospitality guests and capture more bookings for the independent small and medium businesses, including business details like a custom domain name, contact form, social media accounts, and Google Maps widget so guests can view the hotel's location.

The building process is straightforward and includes six easy steps:

1. Template selection. Clients and prospects can explore the exclusive templates on the company's website and see how they will look on desktop, tablet and mobile.
2. Kick-off call. The company's web development team schedules a kick-off call with the client to review information such as styling, cliors, structure, and domain name. The team prepares the overall website development structure, and the client organizes the content he’d like to feature for each page.
3. Content submission. The client submits all visual and textual content using Duda's Content Library features. They can also sync their business information and offering details from their accounts in the SaaS platform.
4. Review and feedback. Once the site structure is complete and content is uploaded, the client receives a user account to access a custom branded instance of Duda's white label intuitive user portal so they can review their own website draft and leave feedback using Site Comments.
5. Final revision. The team makes the edits based on the client feedback. Once complete, the client approves the final website and a go-live date is scheduled.
6. Go live!

Reducing websites build time by 6x

In the beginning of 2023, the website building process could take more than 80 days. However, as automations and integrations were implemented throughout the year using Duda's API, it was possible to reduce build times to only 14 days–a staggering 600% reduction! This will continue to reduce over 2024 as further automation is introduced.

Increasing booking rates by over 25% for their clients

Many clients from this leading hospitality software company were able to increase their direct booking rates by over 25% since partnering with them. With an industry-specific website integrated into their hospitality management platform, they can easily start receiving online bookings 24/7 directly on their homepage.

They can reduce reliance on paid online booking aggregators that can take big commissions and erode their revenue. In fact, direct bookings can be a game-changer for most independent lodging businesses, allowing them to increase occupancy and revenue like never before.

This SaaS platform gave their users the best possible online presence by embedding Duda's powerful white label design platform into their solution. As this company's product director describes it, "With Duda we get rid of all the technical headaches, and get the benefits of being able to leverage Duda's API and automations. So it makes it easier for us to sell and manage websites."

This partner uses Duda as a white label solution and requested to remain anonymous.