How Best Western Boulder Falls Inn grew event revenue 43%

Tucked into Lebanon, Oregon, Best Western Premier Boulder Falls Inn is known as much for its one-acre Japanese garden as for its 84 guest rooms and suites. The property's Conference Center can hold 600 people, and smaller spaces like the Club Room and Board Room round out a venue mix built for everything from weddings to board meetings. Running that mix smoothly, though, used to be harder than it needed to be. 

An old system was capping event revenue

Before iVvy, the events team at Boulder Falls Inn was tied to the office. Managing a booking from home meant setting up remote access in advance, which most staff simply didn't bother doing. Updating a menu for a seasonal event could take over a week, and BEOs could only be customised within the limits of a fixed template. 

There was no built-in reporting on how individual event spaces were performing to properly track event revenue, and no central function diary, so the team tracked bookings manually alongside the software rather than through it. Andi Newcomer, Event Center Manager at Boulder Falls Inn, put it plainly:

It was clear we were just wasting time and money trying to make an old system work.

The property moved to iVvy Event & Venue Management Software alongside a new property management system, Jonas Chorum, drawn in by iVvy's flexible document customisation, online access, and a simpler interface for the team to work in day to day. 

Switching venue systems without losing momentum

The switch didn't require much ramp-up. "iVvy is incredibly user-friendly," Andi said.

The interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, even with minimal training. That said, the training itself was outstanding. We trained on two systems around the same time, and the difference was night and day.

Andi's advice to other venues coming from an older system: don't build workarounds for problems iVvy already solves.

If you're coming from an outdated system, it's easy to fall into the habit of creating workarounds, but with iVvy, that's often unnecessary. I quickly discovered that many of the solutions I was trying to piece together were already built into the system — I just needed someone to point them out. Even if iVvy doesn't currently have exactly what you're looking for, they're constantly updating and adding features. If you share your needs, there's a good chance they'll incorporate them into future updates.

How reporting helped increase event space revenue

Reporting turned out to be the biggest benefit feature for Boulder Falls Inn. Once Andi's team could see event revenue via how each function space was actually performing, two underused rooms stood out. They shifted marketing to focus on those spaces, and revenue from them climbed 43% over the following eight months.

Menu updates that used to eat up a week now take minutes, which is a big part of why Andi's own workweek dropped from around 60 hours to around 45. Remote access means the team can handle an urgent request without a drive to the office, and e-signatures have made booking simpler for clients on their end too. The team also leans on the platform itself more and needs far less day-to-day hand-holding to get through routine tasks.

With iVvy's reporting capabilities, we gained visibility into the performance of individual event spaces. This allowed us to identify two underutilized rooms and adjust our marketing strategy to focus on them. As a result, we've seen a 43% increase in revenue from those spaces over the past eight months.