Fairway Colombo is a subsidiary of Fairway Holdings (FWH) — a conglomerate with businesses in real estate, financial services, waste management, aviation, interior designing and biotechnology. Founded by FWH Chairman Hemaka de Alwis, Fairway Colombo began operations in 2016.
Avinga Wanigasekara, Head of Sales & Marketing at Fairway Colombo, believes that de Alwis is a maverick. “He is a man of many hats with a career spanning across law, politics and real estate, to name a few. FWH began its leisure subsidiary with Fairway Colombo. After witnessing phenomenal success with the hotel, we expanded to Fairway Sunset Serviced Apartments (Galle), Lakeside Cottages (Nuwara Eliya) and a caravan park at Gregory Lake. We’ll soon start a property at Bambarakanda Falls, which is aimed to attract nature enthusiasts.”
Prior to onboarding Simplotel, Fairway Colombo would do only about 1% of their total occupancy in direct bookings. With the Simplotel Booking Engine, their direct bookings have now jumped to 10% of total occupancy.
“Simplotel’s scorecards have also helped us to gauge advanced search and length-of-stay patterns. This has helped us to identify our room for improvement. We created offers and then with Simplotel’s remarketing feature and WhatsApp integration, we were able to nurture and convert our website visitors into customers,” says Wanigasekara.
Wanigasekara concludes, “The guest is the most important element in hospitality. Therefore, you need to have people skills and be a team player in order to succeed.”
Direct bookings hit 11% of total occupancy
