How our hotel PR experts revived Nira Caledonia hotel following a devastating fire

WHEN a fire strikes a well-established business, it is sadly the case that the damage goes much deeper than the cosmetic stuff. It can affect business reputation and sales, not to mention the significant financial hit of total refurbishment.

In early 2018, Nira Caledonia approached Holyrood PR after it had suffered a devastating fire which took out half of the hotel rooms and restaurant.

The nature of the work to refurbish the hotel was extensive and painstaking, as Nira is situated across two Georgian townhouses in Edinburgh’s attractive New Town area.

Whilst handy people got busy restoring cornicing and plasterwork, we were tasked with a just as important job: to help revive and rejuvenate the public profile of Nira Caledonia following the period of its part-closure.

In just 12 months we have worked with Nira to deliver some exceptional PR results, helping it to truly rise from the ashes.

Some of the highlights include:

• A total of 116 cuttings across quality trade publications, all-important local newspapers, impressive national titles and airline magazines
• This coverage has reached a staggering 7,686,401 people all over the world
• Travel reviews from various titles, including the international Emirates Inflight Magazine, ‘Open Skies’, national newspaper The Sun, glossy lifestyle magazine Scottish Field and major social media influencers
• An exclusive event hosted by HPR at the hotel as part of the reopening with key journalists and influencers in attendance
• Key stories identified and maximised for press coverage, such as the hotel’s top environmental credentials and bespoke whisky tie-up with Adelphi Distillery

Read on to find out more about our busy year with Nira Caledonia and how we helped to boost its public profile quicker than your average room service.

1 – CHECKING IN WITH INFLUENCERS

Nira wanted to engage with travel and lifestyle influencers during its most important event – the reopening following its £1.4m refurbishment. With VIP guests attending, like the CEO of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, it was vital that any influencers should be both relevant and authoritative.

With our trusty book of contacts, knowledge of the sector, presentation skills (we even designed the invite) and understanding of influencer engagement, we made sure the event was a huge success. We secured at least 25 relevant and credible influential guests at the lunchtime event, including journalists and bloggers from national news outlets, local titles, lifestyle magazines, business media and hospitality and tourism publications. Among these, industry heavyweights Marketing Edinburgh and Visit Scotland were also in attendance, as well as key communicators from the City of Edinburgh Council.

Bosses of the boutique hotel were thrilled with the turnout on the day, with the far-reaching results and valuable new relationships delivered.

2 – A LITTLE GOES A LONG WAY

At HPR, we pride ourselves on our unique ability to story-spot; identifying those small, everyday details that might seem quite ordinary to our clients and turning them into coverage winners.

Nira Caledonia is especially conscious of its environmental impact and has made changes to the way it operates to reduce that impact. In the past year, the team have swapped out their L’Occitane miniature toiletries for larger, refillable alternatives and have introduced world-first, totally compostable coffee pods to the restaurant and rooms.

By highlighting positive stories like these to national, local, trade and business press, we helped to position Nira as both a high-end, luxury hotel in Edinburgh, but also as a business that cares about its environmental footprint – a factor which is becoming ever more important among customers.

3 – GLOWING REVIEWS

A significant part of the relaunch activity for Nira Caledonia was to get people in the door to see experience the new and improved hotel. This was delivered by extensive invites and reach outs to key writers in international, national and local publications, as well as inflight magazines, glossy lifestyle magazines and travel and lifestyle influencers.

To date, we have delivered three major glowing reviews for Nira across a variety of publications, including Scottish national lifestyle magazine Scottish Field, one of Scotland’s most popular daily newspapers, The Sun, and most impressively, inflight magazine found onboard one of the world’s biggest and most popular airlines; Emirates ‘Open Skies’. This neatly coincided with the launch of the Emirates Edinburgh to Dubai service at the end of 2018.

We’ve also facilitated stays for major social media influencers, such as Alexa Luria – who is perhaps best known as best friend to Ariana Grande (yes, the Ariana Grande). Alexa told all 675,000 of her Instagram followers what a fabulous time she had staying at Nira.

Featuring in such a wide variety of media outlets (traditional print, online and social media) has helped us to reach many of Nira Caledonia’s key demographics, on both a national and global scale.

4 – A DRAM GOOD TIME

When Nira told us of its amazing tie-up with Scotland’s most renowned curator of whiskies, Adelphi Distillery, we simply had to share it with the media.

The hotel works with Adelphi to give guests the opportunity to buy and sample exclusive and highly-collectable limited runs of Scotland’s spirit.

This story reached over 70,000 people, with coverage across major publications like The National, Edinburgh Evening News and Scottish Field. The trade press drank it up too, with features on Hotel News Scotland, Scottish Licensed Trade News and Brewed and Distilled. Nira’s own dram was also a social media hit, with 40 retweets/likes on Twitter resulting from coverage alone.

This coverage is of real significance to Nira Caledonia as it further distinguishes the hotel from Edinburgh’s competitive hotel scene – and puts the story in front of the potential audiences most likely to be tempted to visit.

It all resulted from a humble press release too, not only driving the influential media coverage, but also ensuring that the story was a hit on social media too.

WORKING WITH AN AWARD-WINNING HOTEL PR AGENCY CAN BRING A WHOLE RAFT OF ADVANTAGES TO YOUR BUSINESS.

Did you like the results in our PR case study? Want to reap the same rewards as Nira Caledonia did?

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