Best Western France Has Been Personalizing Customer Experience at Scale for 6 Years with Reelevant

Best Western France: A Cooperative of Unique Hoteliers

Best Western France, or Best Western Hotels & Resorts, is not your typical hotel chain. From the beginning, the group has operated as a cooperative: 320 independent hotels, often small-scale, with over 60% family-run. Each establishment has its own character, avoiding standardization while adhering to shared quality standards.

This specificity makes the brand unique in the French market: a rich, diverse network ranging from budget to ultra-luxury, with 13 different brands. Best Western France serves two very distinct customer segments:

• 50% leisure clientele, primarily French, aged between 45 and 55;
  
  
• 50% corporate clientele, with radically different needs.
  
  

At the same time, Best Western France stands out through its strong commitment to customer experience. The brand has received multiple awards at the CX Awards, notably for communication and customer relations, including this video campaign.

Complex Challenges in a Sector Seeking Relevance

The tourism and hospitality sector faces very specific challenges:

• Daily perishable inventory: If a night isn't sold, it's lost.
  
  
• Fluctuating prices and stock: Prices change daily based on demand, availability, location, season, etc.
  
  
• Highly segmented seasonality: Varies by region, season, and beyond.
  
  

These challenges create highly complex combinations when it comes to personalizing content and offering a frictionless customer experience. As a result, personalization — if done right — can be extremely costly, involving multiple segments, solutions, teams, and leading to significant expenses.

For Mélanie Le Livec, Marketing and Communications Director at Best Western, her team's main mission is clear: activate and retain the customer base. With a lean team (a common trait in this sector) and the challenges mentioned, the brand doesn’t have the full capacity to implement a relevant, at-scale personalization strategy on its own.

A Technological Solution: Reelevant

Best Western France found the ideal partner in Reelevant to meet these challenges:

• Real-time personalization: When an email is opened, the customer sees actually available hotels at the right rate, tailored to their preferences.
  
  
• A simple, controlled model: One single email template can display dozens of combinations, without adding extra work for the teams.
  
  
• No need for developers: The platform integrates with Best Western’s existing setup, without overhauling its technical infrastructure.
  
  

"Our marketing team remains small," Mélanie points out, while emphasizing that they still carry out initiatives that would typically require much more resources, similar to much larger organizations.

Real-World Use Cases Serving Customer Experience

Best Western France relies on Reelevant to orchestrate advanced, relevant personalization at every stage of the customer relationship. Concretely, emails sent to members are enriched with content tailored to their preferred region, identified through their history and past interactions. For example, a client used to staying in the North of France won’t receive the same suggestions as one preferring the Alps or the Southwest.

Beyond geographic personalization, Best Western France also fine-tunes offers based on profile: corporate or leisure clients, each segment receives distinct communications with visuals, promotions, and messages suited to their specific expectations.

Depending on the client’s purchasing power or preferences, the hotels displayed will also vary: high-spending customers will see hotels where nightly rates exceed a set threshold defined by Best Western. On the other hand, if clients prefer certain hotel services, hotels emphasizing SPA, pool, restaurant services, etc., will be showcased.

The loyalty program is also fully integrated into this logic, with dynamic blocks that display each customer’s status, points balance, and associated benefits directly within emails. This strengthens the bond between the brand and its loyal customers while making their perks more accessible.

Finally, a key aspect of this organization is operational efficiency. Thanks to Reelevant, there’s no need to recreate emails for every campaign: everything is managed via business rules and variables, using a single, robust technological foundation. This allows the marketing teams, despite their small size, to handle a large volume of personalized communications without unnecessary complexity.

Measurable Results for Best Western

After six years of collaboration, Best Western has observed various impacts across business, customer, and team levels:

• From a business perspective: The click-through rate increased by 220% on personalized emails compared to standard sendings.
  
  
• From the customer side: Clients have shared positive feedback, particularly their satisfaction in receiving offers that truly match their preferences.
  
  
• Within the teams: No additional workload has been felt. On the contrary, thanks to Reelevant, Best Western can personalize at scale its communications without adding to the workload. One single CRM project manager is enough to oversee everything: creating a personalized email with Reelevant takes no more time than a standard email.
  
  

Best Western France proves that it’s possible to combine the unique characteristics of independent hoteliers with cutting-edge marketing strategy. Thanks to Reelevant, the brand continues to offer its customers a personalized, seamless experience while showcasing the hoteliers who are part of the cooperative.

Want to learn more about Best Western’s methods and concrete results?
Watch the replay of our latest Breakfast of Legends.