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Introduction
Hotel Captain Cook is Alaska’s only member of Preferred Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, an organization of 620 of the finest independently owned and managed luxury hotels and resorts across the world. As a Sojern Pay on the Stay customer since 2017, Sojern runs their digital marketing and metasearch—increasing their direct booking share and lessening their dependence on OTAs by 60%.
Objectives
Hotel Captain Cook wanted to work with Sojern to increase direct bookings in order to better provide for their guests, and Sojern’s Pay on the Stay package has delivered just that. They saw strong direct booking performance with Sojern running their digital marketing efforts across programmatic display and search engine marketing (SEM). Recognizing that integrated multichannel strategies increase performance, they quickly added metasearch to their Pay on the Stay campaign.
"We were entirely too dependent on OTAs, and through Sojern, we’ve been able to flip that. OTA bookings are down and we were able to increase our overall online revenue as a result. One of the main drivers, if not the main drivers of this, was connecting with Sojern. You drive people to our website to book direct. With direct bookings, we are able to better provide for our guests, and then on top of it, we aren’t paying out a huge commission."
Solution
A comprehensive multichannel marketing solution is key for staying top of mind as travelers plan and book their travel. And, perhaps one of the most important channels that hoteliers can be on is metasearch. Metasearch is dominated by OTA spend, so if a hotel is not protecting their brand by having a metasearch presence, OTAs will bid on travelers searching for that hotel. Travelers will be driven to book on the OTA platform as opposed to the hotel's direct website. With Sojern running metasearch on top of display and SEM, Hotel Captain Cook reduced their OTA bookings and increased their direct booking share as a result. Nearly two-thirds of their Sojern-driven bookings came from metasearch in 2022 alone. This has led to Hotel Captain Cook decreasing their reliance on OTA bookings by 60%, and increasing their direct bookings share.
About the Partnership
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Agency:
Hotel Partner:
Attraction Partner:
"We were entirely too dependent on OTAs, and through Sojern, we’ve been able to flip that. OTA bookings are down and we were able to increase our overall online revenue as a result. One of the main drivers, if not the main drivers of this, was connecting with Sojern. You drive people to our website to book direct. With direct bookings, we are able to better provide for our guests, and then on top of it, we aren’t paying out a huge commission."
