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Late Rooms"In a highly competitive and fast moving space our marketing was in need of an overhaul"
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TUI owned, market leading online travel pure play LateRooms.com operated three core businesses in Europe, Asia and South America. Like a lot of my previous roles this too was a very hands on with the additional twist of directly managing teams in UK and Singapore plus providing best practice guidance to Brazil. The senior marketing team had exited the business, sales were underperforming and a fresh approach was urgently needed.
A leaky bucket
Operating in very competitive online hotel short-break market, where there’s little brand loyalty and where customers had been trained to be promiscuous, meant LateRooms.com was all about new customer acquisition. Most customers were only booking once – so there was no customer LTV.
Yet TGI will tell you that leisure customers alone will book some 4.4 hotel short breaks, not to mention how frequently business travellers will book – so LateRooms.com was effectively operating a ‘leaky bucket’ marketing model. Via expensive acquisition campaigns they were pouring new customers into the top of the funnel and then letting them gush out the bottom, converting only a small percentage on the way through. As time progressed the number of competitors increased and acquisition had become prohibitively more expensive – so something had to change. Building out the CRM capability beyond just a few emails was a clear strategic imperative. This was achieved via a multi-strand approach…
Result = +15% increase in sales across the piste including a 3x increase in email bookings. Examples of our social media share videos and campaign landing pages
A secret partnership…
Working with the team at Secret Escapes, I set up and negotiated what quickly became a very lucrative JV marketing partnership – LateLuxry.com – targeting the upper end of the LateRooms database this brought together their superb product and presentation, both our brands and all delivered in a relevant and engaging way to the customer.
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A new look
The online hotel booking market is very crowded. We all look the same, talk the same, have the same hotels and same deals use the same technology in the same way. No wonder customers are promiscuous and there is little brand loyalty.
Drill deeper and all the key players had become very slick transactional websites that were great at getting you to book but were boring as hell with no personality or differentiation. They only guys with any point of difference were Trip Advisor who’s focus was more destinational than transactional. Spotting an opportunity for the LateRooms brand to have some real relevance with their customers, we went back to basics reminding ourselves of the customer need – simply to book a hotel room… they know which city and on what date… so ours is not to inspire… it’s actually quite functional as they need a room because they are there for an event or occasion… be it a business trip, wedding, romantic break, pop concert, sporting event, family trip etc… so our job is not transactional nor destinational… but experiential. Once we worked this moment of truth out the rest became ease in terms of our brand personality - how we looked, how we behaved, how we talked etc. Thus we began to develop a very clear differentiation in the market that was very relevant to meeting our customers’ need. Built around the strapline LateRooms.com Make It Happen here are some early drafts of the new look creative New App Marketing Campaign
Screen size was shrinking and nowhere faster than in the world of travel. Customers were rapidly moving from desk top to tablet to mobile. LateRooms.com were on the money when they spotted early on that it was no longer about M.commerce – it was about Apps.
With a new (and very savvy) App just launched in the UK and APAC markets meant a market leading opportunity was there for the taking A strong campaign mix proved an early winner across the summer driving some 750,000 downloads, which quickly translated into hard bookings. Key elements of the campaign were:
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