Background
IBEROSTAR Hotels & Resorts is a leading hotel chain with a presence in the major tourist destinations in Spain, the Mediterranean and Caribbean. The company has around 100 hotels of 4 and 5-star quality for leisure travel and corporate events.
IBEROSTAR Hotels & Resorts rolls out core corporate marketing activities for business growth, which incorporates branding, marketing & sales campaigns across a range of websites within the group. All activities focus primarily on the main site – iberostar.com
Digital marketing activities include :
Relational Marketing: Using e-mail, SMS and app notifications, the company contacts users from its database with a range of tailored products and offers.
Trade Points (IberostarPOINTS): All site users (registered and non registered) are offered accumulative points which can be redeemed for merchandising, hotel services and other products such as tablets. They can also be stored and redeemed against a future booking.
Strategy
IBEROSTAR wanted to combine these activities with their other programmes such as SEO and SEM, and incorporate a major affiliate campaign.
The hotel chain first launched its affiliate programme through AffiliRed (www.affilired.com) in 2010, with a great deal of success. It now looked to increase its efforts and extend its activities in affiliate networks, driving product sales and raising brand awareness in new and existing territories.
IBEROSTAR Hotels & Resorts targeted global markets through AffiliRed’s network of multiple high impact affiliate partners specialising in the travel and tourism sector.
AffiliRed defined the strategy, which focused on generating quaility traffic to iberostar.com. The affiliate programme used networks including publications, bloggers and voucher code sites whose audience sits at the core of IBEROSTAR’s customer base. The programme was integrated with other digital marketing channels by Neo@Ogilvy which was appointed as IBEROSTAR’S marketing agency.
Results
Since IBEROSTAR Hotels & Resort launched its affiliate marketing campaigns through AffiliRed the results have been positive year on year. In 2013 the overall sales via AffiliRed Campaigns increased by 33.74%, with revenue up by 30.70%.
Next Steps
The company plans to capitalise on the success of its affiliate programme by targeting new territories and exploring new markets. It will work with AffiliRed to extend its Publishers Incentive Programme with greater rewards for affiliates actively supporting the campaign. Marketing plans will be created with the top publishers to increase programme visibility.
Jon Recacoechea, Head of Marketing Online for IBEROSTAR Hotels & Resorts said:
“This is our fourth consecutive year of working with AffiliRed. Affiliate marketing has been very successful for us and is a crucial part of our online marketing.”
He added:
“AffiliRed focuses purely on the travel sector with a network of affiliates who understand our market. Neo@Ogilvy ensures that the programme integrates with our other digital marketing activities and AffiliRed’s clear reporting process means that we can see immediately what works and what doesn’t. We are looking forward to even more success in 2014”
AffiliRed’s CEO and founder, Diego Gomila, said:
“IBEROSTAR Hotels & Resorts have a very sophisticated and well established digital marketing programme. We are looking forward to continued success this year as we strive for even greater growth for the company.”