iLumio - 58+ positive replies from three hotel markets
iLumio provides hotels with guest experience systems - hotel TV with streaming services, guest apps and in-room upselling through the screen - along with the TV hardware itself. Its clients include leading hotel properties in Poland. From late March to mid-August, campaigns on the Polish, German and Slovak markets brought over 58 positive replies - each in the recipient's native language.
Who they are.
iLumio is a Polish provider of guest experience systems for the hospitality industry. The in-room screen handles streaming services and casting from the guest's own devices, displays hotel information and the bill, and sells - the restaurant, the spa and the property's other services. The company also supplies the TV hardware, so a hotel can replace screens and system in a single project.
iLumio's solutions run in leading hotel properties in Poland - from mountain resorts to city chains. That position on the domestic market was the starting point for further growth.
The need covered two directions at once - systematic outreach to hotel decision-makers in Poland, and entry into foreign markets.
What was in the way.
The in-room system is usually replaced together with the TV hardware, and that cycle spans years. An offer sent between replacements reaches a hotel that simply has no such topic on the table. The campaign first had to establish who was close to that moment - before proposing anything.
Hotels publish addresses for reservations and reception, and the people deciding on investments rarely read either. Some properties leave no trace of their management or owners online at all. Reaching them required several data sources at once, and a separate route for the cases where no decision-maker contact exists.
In a hotel chain the system decision is made at head office; in an independent property it sits with the owner or general manager. A single shared campaign mixes those two structures and speaks accurately to neither - the segments required separate lists and separate copy.
How we opened three markets.
A market map from four sources
Each source contributes a different part of the picture. Booking and Google Maps give full market coverage with property category and size, the central registry settles formal status, and LinkedIn leads to people - general managers, owners and those responsible for investments.
We split the lists into chains and independent properties from the start, because in those two worlds the decision is made by someone else, at a different level. That split then ran through every market and every communication wave.
We also tested investment signals - mapping new properties and expansions. That route delivered less and was wound down, with the campaign's weight going where the results were.
- Booking, Maps, registry, LinkedIn
- chains vs independents
General inboxes as a route in their own right
The industry standard is to skip general inboxes - they are considered a dead end nobody attends to. We built separate copy for them, asking for the message to be passed to the person responsible for investments, with no personalisation fields, which sound false on a general address.
Hotel receptions and offices forward such messages more often than the industry assumes. Replies came from directors and owners of properties for which no tool had found a direct contact - including hotels from the exact segment the client cared about most.
In the results, this route turned out to be the largest single source of conversations across all three markets. The programme's biggest campaign ran entirely on the general addresses of German hotels.
- over half the result
- a forwarding request
- no forced personalisation
Asking about hardware replacement instead of offering a system
A hotel replaces its TVs every few years, and that is the moment the in-room system decision naturally returns to the table - screens and software can be replaced in one project. Rather than asking about system needs, we asked about hardware replacement plans.
Such a question reads differently than an offer. The recipient responds to a concrete point about their own infrastructure, and the reply qualifies by itself - a hotel planning a replacement is in the buying window, and one that has just replaced returns to the database with different messaging in a few years.
This wave generated the strongest interest in the entire programme and became the foundation for the communication on all three markets.
- entering the buying moment
- the question qualifies
- the programme's best wave
The second wave - functionalities and selling through the TV
The assumption was simple - if the hardware is no topic, the topic can be what the screen is capable of. We asked about the functionalities guests expect: streaming services, casting from their own devices, hotel information and the bill on screen.
The second argument was sales. The in-room TV can sell the hotel's services - the restaurant, the spa, a stay extension - and this thread proved distinctly interesting to hoteliers, because it turns the cost of a system replacement into a source of revenue.
Separating the two waves had one more advantage - the same database could be approached again without repetition, with a topic that was new to the recipient.
- guest-facing functionalities
- upselling through the screen
- a return without repetition
Germany and Slovakia - natively, with a test instead of an opinion
On the German market we targeted properties of four stars and above, keeping the split into chains and independent hotels. The copy was written in German from the start, with grammar and conventions checked to audit level - including the polite forms that decide a sender's credibility in German B2B.
The client's local partner proposed his own versions of the copy, rewritten in a style he considered better. We put both versions into a test - ours achieved a several-times-higher reply rate and a higher share of positive replies. We know how to construct a cold email and how to carry it across languages, and we have the tools to write at native level - the test showed that this craft beats a feel for the language alone.
The third market was Slovakia, served in Slovak with the same two-wave system. Positive replies came from all three markets - including from general inboxes, which proved a route in their own right abroad as well.
- 3 languages natively
- test vs local partner
- DE: four stars and up
Outcomes, in numbers.
Positive replies
From late March to mid-August - hotel decision-makers interested in a conversation about the system, handed to the iLumio team as they came in.
Markets, each in its native language
Poland, Germany and Slovakia - one two-wave communication system, with copy written separately in each language.
Of the result from general inboxes
The route the industry routinely skips brought over half the positive replies - including from properties with no public contact to a decision-maker at all.
In under five months the programme went from building a database out of four sources, through two communication waves, to three markets in three languages. The iLumio team received over 58 positive replies from hotel decision-makers.
Two decisions built this result. The first was asking about TV hardware replacement instead of offering a system - replies came from hotels inside the buying window and qualified the database for the following waves by themselves. The second was treating general inboxes as a route in their own right - they brought over half the result, including conversations with properties for which no tool had found a direct contact.
The test from the German market stays with us. Copy written with our craft, in a foreign language, achieved a several-times-higher reply rate than versions rewritten by a local partner - the campaign's outcome was decided by how the message was constructed, verified in a test, while knowing the language proved necessary but nowhere near sufficient.
Over 58 positive replies in under 5 months from three markets in three languages - with more than half the result coming from the route the industry routinely skips.
A provider of guest experience systems for hotels needed conversations with decision-makers in Poland and abroad. We built a database from four sources, separated chains from independent properties and ran two communication waves - a question about TV hardware replacement, then the system's functionalities and selling services through the screen. The result was over 58 positive replies in under five months from three markets, in three native languages.
What we took away.
Three principles from this programme that we carry onto further markets and industries.
A question that lands in the buying cycle opens more conversations than an offer
A hotel replaces its TV hardware every few years, and that is when the system decision returns to the table. Asking about replacement plans found the properties inside that window, and the replies segmented the database on their own - into those ready to talk today and those to return to later.
A test settles foreign-language copy, and craft carries across languages
Our German copy achieved a several-times-higher reply rate than versions rewritten by a local partner. The way a cold email is constructed - structure, length, the concreteness of the question - carries across languages, and the right tools hold it at native level. A feel for the language without that craft lost the test.
The general inbox is a route the industry surrenders without a fight
Over half the positive replies came from hotels' general addresses - including properties with no direct contact in existence. Receptions forward a well-written message more often than the industry consensus assumes, and competition on this route is the lowest.
Entering a new market comes down to the same decisions as a domestic campaign - whom to target, what to ask and which way to reach them - except every one of them has to be made anew, in a new language, with no ready answers.
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