Situation
Destination Hotels & Resorts (DHR) was seeking new ways of leveraging existing assets. With 34 unique destinations in the collection, the cross-sell opportunities to past guests provided the most promise, however each property had its own marketing budget, plan and approach. In order to maximize each destination’s efforts for the benefit of the entire collection, many elements needed to come together, including an efficient data management model, a unified delivery platform and consistent messaging. But messaging for each property needed to be unique.
Solution
Destination Delivers is a single destination on the Web, customized to each guest based on past stay history, personal preference and predictive modeling. DHR feeds users information and offers on the properties in the collection that would interest them most, and dynamic content—including original travel articles, videos, downloadable tools and more—that matches up with their preferences. All of this content is delivered through a personalized URL. The ultimate objective was more than simply an online clearinghouse of general resort offers. Destination Delivers would be an interactive Internet site, exclusively tailored for each individual, where they could easily access the travel experiences that interested them most, while creating a highly segmented target market for DHR that was primed to convert on cross-sell opportunities.
Research Planning and Implementation
Using Air’s proprietary suite of analytics tools, called Cyclone, tight user profiles were created which allowed individuals to add more detail. Guest data for 34 properties was aggregated in order to establish profiles for more than 1 million guest records. Videos, news feeds and travel tools were served up in real time based on user preferences. Extensive research was done to align content with the specific interest categories and several unique editorial calendars were developed.
Results
The response to the May 1, 2009 launch of Destination Delivers surpassed all expectations. The program has been credited for increases in active members staying at a new property within the collection, increased repeat business for the member’s primary property and for generating millions in incremental revenue for the collection.
