Historic Route 66 landmark, Holbrook, AZ
How the Wigwam Motel started booking itself.
$450K+ a yearin direct bookings
- Client
- Wigwam Motel
- Result
- $450K+ a year in direct bookings
- What I did
- New website with online booking, plus Google rankings
Where they started
The Wigwam Motel is one of the most recognizable stops on Route 66. Plenty of people wanted to stay there, and there was no way to book a room online. Every reservation meant calling the front desk between 3 and 9pm or sending an email and waiting.
So the phone rang all day, staff spent their time answering it, and anyone who called after hours booked somewhere else. On top of that, almost 10,000 people a month were searching for the Wigwam Motel by name, and the old website wasn't even on the first page of Google.
What I did
I built them a new website with online booking built into it, so a traveler planning a Route 66 trip from anywhere in the world could reserve a wigwam any time of day without picking up the phone.
Then I optimized the site to take the top spot on Google, so the people already searching for the motel found the official site first.
What happened
Monthly website visits more than doubled, from 3,689 to 7,614 between January 2023 and January 2024. In the first full month with online booking, the motel brought in over $58,000, while phone calls actually went down.
More bookings, fewer calls to answer, and less staff time. Today the motel does more than $450,000 a year in direct bookings.
The proof
