Mariana Delgado, Director of Operations at Impala sat down (over Zoom of course) with Gonçalo Nunes to discuss why they'd opted to work with Impala to help expand their market reach.

The reservations are straight forward and don't put extra weight on our current operations.

What’s your name?

Gonçalo Nunes

Can you tell us a bit about your hotel?

Hotel do Chiado is a small boutique hotel with 38 bedrooms (2 suites included), located in the most historical area of Lisbon, Baixa/Chiado. In my opinion, we offer a unique and personal service to all our clients.

Our Entretanto Rooftop Bar has the best view over Lisbon, overlooking St. George Castle, the river Tagus, and some of the old neighbourhoods of Lisbon: Graça, Castelo, Sé, Madragoa and Alfama. The bar is open for lunch and/or dinner, light meals, snacks and obviously the best cocktails in Lisbon!

From our location you are within walking distance of the major tourist attractions in Lisbon: Santa Justa Elevador, Carmo’s ruins (one of the landmarks of the 25th April), Praça do Comércio, Armazens do Chiado, St. George Castle, among other historical monuments, museums and sightseeing attractions.

The metro station is also within walking distance from the entrance of the Hotel, actually is beneath the Hotel (3 levels down).

What made you decide to go with Impala?

Part of my job is to search and evaluate new partnerships, and Impala seemed to be a good fit to help us regain a bit more of the UK market along with exploring new avenues.

Impala’s Hotel Director is a hospitality professional I respect, and having navigated through the product and its benefits with her I had no doubts on how successful it would be.

How has your interaction been with Impala?

Very good. Good communication, great expertise and collaboration. The reservations are straight forward and don't put extra weight on our current operations.

Can you tell us a bit about what you do for the hotel?

As a Revenue Manager, my job is to predict, forecast and adjust the Hotel strategy to the market conditions/demand. I’m responsible for finding and establishing new partnerships, as well as maintaining and securing account management for all existing partners.

I also schedule regular meetings to monitor, control and evaluate results. Another aspect of my role is managing integrations and connections to all our online partners (e-commerce).

How do you manage distribution at the moment? What channels do you use besides Impala?

We manage our distribution using a channel manager (Siteminder) to connect with B2C partners, such as Booking.com, Expedia, Hotelbeds, etc…

We also have our own website that is not connected to the channel manager. Besides the above, we still have offline contracts with B2B partners (FIT contract running from November to October of the following year).

How has Covid changed that?

It didn’t change the way we distribute, the only thing that changed with Covid was the consumer demand - which decreased to levels that I would never, in my worst nightmares, ever would consider possible.

Obviously we adapted to market and demand conditions, adjusting for instance our cancellation policies so that we can offer more flexible options, but the real issue, for me, is confidence. If you’re not confident about travelling to another country, you just cancel and don’t go.

How will we, as a Hotel and even as a destination regain the confidence and trust of demand? It’s hard to tell.