Caesars Hotels & Casinos, Etihad Airways, Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board, Promperu and Travel Alberta recognized for successful and innovative campaigns
LAS VEGAS, December 15, 2014 — Expedia® Media Solutions, the advertising sales division of Expedia, Inc., announced the recipients of its 2014 Latin America and North America Partner Awards at the Expedia Inc. annual partner conference. The Partner Awards are presented to those original and groundbreaking campaigns that exemplify innovation and success in digital marketing and advertising across regions.
To ensure campaigns meet the highest standard, in both execution and results, Expedia Media Solutions consults with partners to develop custom solutions that effectively leverage the Expedia platform, resources and vast partner network. By tapping into the expertise of the digital consultants at Expedia Media Solutions, marketers can create cross-brand campaigns that use innovative tactics and drive impactful results like those demonstrated by this year’s winners.
“Our digital consultants work with partners to develop innovative, custom solutions that effectively deliver against brand objectives,” said Noah Tratt, senior global vice president, Expedia Media Solutions. “The team leverages their deep insights and extensive experience in the travel marketing industry to develop multi-faceted campaigns that engage key audiences and drive real business results.”
The annual awards recognize campaigns across travel marketing categories. This year’s winners include:
2014 North America Airline Campaign of the Year: Etihad Airways
Etihad Airways worked with Expedia Media Solutions to execute a highly-targeted, year-long campaign that would effectively convey specific messages around its new U.S. hubs; Los Angeles International Airport, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and San Francisco International Airport, and promote unique offerings such as in-flight nanny service and U.S. pre-clearance in Abu Dhabi. The campaign utilized origin and destination targeting, as well as audience targeting for luxury and family travelers, and each month ran one-to-two week campaigns with high share of voice, capitalizing on holidays like Mother’s Day to blanket the site with key messaging. To complement the campaign, Etihad also provided three pairs of round-trip tickets for Expedia Twitter Chat giveaways in the Middle East, Africa and India, which aligned with some of the airline’s top destinations. The campaign has driven immense exposure for Etihad in key markets; a one-day Vacation Packages tab takeover on Expedia.ca successfully drove engagement for a Guest Miles promotion and resulted in a 417 percent increase in year-over-year gross bookings.
2014 North America Hotel Campaign of the Year: Caesars Hotels & Casinos
Caesars approached Expedia Media Solutions to help develop a campaign that would increase brand awareness for its properties with audiences in the key Asia Pacific and Latin America markets. A strategic partnership with Brand USA allowed Caesar’s to increase the overall campaign budget and maximize reach. Utilizing a combination of onsite media and engaging social elements across seven Expedia points-of-sale, the campaign drove traffic to a custom microsite that featured more than 50 pages of custom content, localized into seven different languages. The microsite showcased the Caesars portfolio, including hotels, restaurants, shows, nightlife, shopping and pools, and incorporated a booking widget linking back to Expedia points-of-sale to keep booking top of mind. The campaign, which can be optimized in real-time to achieve success in both brand awareness and demand, has generated more than 140 million impressions, and during a four-month period, resulted in more than 2,900 bookings.
2014 North America Destination Campaign of the Year: Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board
As part of its “What’s your LA story?” campaign, the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board partnered with Expedia Media Solutions to create a meaningful relationship with domestic and international travelers and drive demand for its Tourism Marketing District member hotels. Expedia Media Solutions used a combination of tactical and strategic placements to align with the “What’s your LA story?” multimedia campaign, which targeted unique visitor segments and highlighted the diversity of Los Angeles and myriad travel possibilities through a series of 30- and 15-second commercials and videos. The commercials were deployed in key U.S. markets, and pre-roll videos ran in Australia, Canada and China, as well as on a custom LA Tourism Expedia landing page, and vacation package promotions were targeted to opportunistic travelers looking to create their own LA story. The partnership successfully enabled LA Tourism to develop a relationship with consumers and resulted in year-over-year demand growth for Los Angeles TMD member hotels by an average of 30 percent across Expedia, Inc. points of sale during the campaign period.
2014 North America Innovative Campaign of the Year: Travel Alberta
Building on an existing partnership with Expedia Media Solutions in North America, Travel Alberta wanted to expand its campaign internationally to build brand awareness in key markets, including the U.S., Canada, Japan, U.K. and Australia. In addition to standard media running on five Expedia points of sale, the campaign employed fresh, out of the box tactics, like a Satellite Media Tour sponsorship, and drove consumers to a custom Travel Alberta microsite built and hosted by Expedia. Lake Louise, Alberta served as a spectacular backdrop for Expedia’s “Summer Travel Tips” SMT, which provided an organic and highly-relevant opportunity for Travel Alberta to reach travel-savvy consumers. Travel Alberta’s participation marked the first time a media partner was included in Expedia’s broadcast initiative, and the SMT generated strong results for both brands; in just two weeks, the SMT aired more than 1,600 times and reached an audience of 13 million people. To further amplify the consumer interest generated by the SMT, Expedia Media Solutions drove consumers to the customized microsites through traditional onsite media and social media.
2014 Latin America Campaign of the Year: Promperu
Seeking to increase year-over-year passengers to Peruvian destinations and raise awareness for the diverse travel experiences available in the country, Promperu partnered with Expedia Media Solutions to reach consumers from the U.S., Canada and Australia. The campaign included high-exposure placements, such as banner ads promoting aggressive hotel deals for different cities or banners targeted at consumers researching competitive destinations, as well as increased social media presence, including sponsorship of South America Week and the Expedia Twitter chat. To further amplify Promperu’s efforts, Expedia partner airlines were encouraged to run media campaigns promoting Peruvian destinations, which led to a social media campaign with LAN Airlines and an Expedia Homepage Takeover with Avianca Airlines. A truly integrated campaign, with input and support from a variety of Expedia departments, the Promperu campaign delivered almost 2.5 million impressions during a one-month period and increased year-over-year U.S. passengers by 40 percent.
About Expedia Media Solutions
Formed in 2007, Expedia Media Solutions is dedicated to building online and offline media partnerships for travel and non-travel brand advertisers and to enable them to leverage the unique media value of Expedia’s network of leading travel brands and global points of sale. For more information, visit www.advertising.expedia.com.
About Expedia, Inc.
Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE) is the largest online travel company in the world, with an extensive brand portfolio that includes some of the world’s leading online travel brands, including:
- Expedia.com®, the world’s largest full service online travel agency, with localized sites in 31 countries
- Hotels.com®, the hotel specialist with sites in more than 60 countries
- Hotwire®, a leading discount travel site that offers opaque deals in 13 countries on its 12 sites in North America, Europe and Asia
- Egencia®, the world’s fifth largest corporate travel management company
- eLongTM, the second largest online travel company in China
- Venere.comTM, the online hotel reservation specialist in Europe
- trivago®, a leading online hotel search company with sites in 39 countries
- Expedia Local Expert®, a provider of in-market concierge services, activities and experiences in 18 markets worldwide
- Classic Vacations®, a top luxury travel specialist
- Expedia® CruiseShipCenters®, one of North America’s leading retail cruise vacation experts
The company delivers consumers value in leisure and business travel, drives incremental demand and direct bookings to travel suppliers, and provides advertisers the opportunity to reach a highly valuable audience of in- market travel consumers through Expedia Media Solutions. Expedia also powers bookings for some of the world’s leading airlines and hotels, top consumer brands, high traffic websites, and thousands of active affiliates through Expedia® Affiliate Network. For corporate and industry news and views, visit us at www.expediainc.com or follow us on Twitter @expediainc.