HHM Hotels reached +100% revenue thanks to multi-level Holiday Cyber Sale campaign

Cendyn sought to develop a Cyber Monday campaign creative strategy for Independent Collection Hotels around “biggest sale of the year” messaging, destination imagery, and simple yet effective holiday themes to appeal to key demographics.

Here are the main goals of this campaign:

• Drive direct bookings through special offers during a high-demand period
• Maximize revenue through discounts of up to 40%
• Secure immediate bookings, as well as reservations for need periods into 2024
• Increase the average length of stay
• Achieve higher occupancy rates
• Enhance cross-property awareness within the IC portfolio, encouraging guests to explore and book multiple properties within the collection as a whole

The campaign employed a multi-channel digital marketing strategy, focusing heavily on SEM and email marketing. SEM efforts aimed to capture high-intent search traffic and drive conversions directly on property websites while retargeting customer resource management lists allowed both channels to reach brand loyalists.

The creative strategy centered on “year’s best rates” messaging, vivid photos of desirable locations, and holiday theming. The offer and final creative imagery varied slightly by property to further enhance the client’s segmentation categories (luxury, lifestyle, and resort). The sale was then extended from “Cyber Monday” through early December, at which point ad copy was updated across all campaigns to incorporate “sale extension” messaging — creating a sense of urgency for consumers over remaining sale dates. This was a unique strategy employed for the first time during this sale.

The sale successfully converted consumer interest into actual stays, producing an 84.5% increase in room nights with only +4% more bookings than the prior IC campaign. The increase in room nights resulted in a 100% revenue increase.

Occupancy rates also increased across the entire client portfolio, with November – December 2023 seeing 50% of the room night boost, followed by 35% midweek need periods into 2024. The average daily rate for the campaign was $349, a 7% increase compared to prior campaigns with lower discounts. The average length of stay increased to 3.1 nights (over 2.7 leading up to the campaign).

The campaign achieved a higher level of engagement via SEM efforts, with a recorded click-through rate increase of 33% (from a combination of +131% clicks and +69% impressions against the prior IC portfolio campaigns).

SEM and display campaigns delivered over 7 million impressions, 50K+ clicks, and a 25% total plan production rate. The return on investment across the portfolio was 11:1 through paid efforts, and SEM campaigns alone delivered an impressive 12:1 return.