AVIANCA, New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau, Hilton Worldwide, Korean Air, Destination BC, Grand Velas Riviera Maya and Thompson Miami Beach recognized for marketing campaign excellence
Las Vegas, Dec. 10, 2015 – Expedia® Media Solutions, the advertising sales division of the Expedia group, today announced the recipients of its 2015 North America and Latin America Partner Awards. Presented at the annual Expedia, Inc. partner conference, these awards celebrate partner campaigns that exemplify innovation, creativity and success in travel marketing across the regions over the past year.
The below award recipients partnered with Expedia Media Solutions to develop strategic campaigns that have engaged audiences through a variety of solutions across a diverse portfolio of leading travel brands, with significant results that have driven visibility and demand.
“Our partner award winners this year in Latin America and North America stand out for campaigns that demonstrate the power of engaging travelers with media solutions that are strategic, targeted and creative,” said Noah Tratt, Senior Global Vice President of Expedia Media Solutions. “Through collaboration with these partner brands and destinations, their stories can come to life on our platform and extend in ways that drive awareness and demand for impactful results.”
These awards recognize campaigns that leverage media solutions across travel marketing categories, and include the following recipients this year.
2015 Latin America Campaign of the Year: AVIANCA
Avianca, one of the largest airlines in Latin America, operating more than 800 daily flights to more than 100 cities in America and Europe, was looking to generate awareness and increase demand to new destinations. Avianca partnered with Expedia Media Solutions to create a high visibility campaign around Central American Independence Week, with a mix of media including targeted display, deals promotions and social media engagements on Expedia.com and Expedia.ca as well as a Twitter Chat. The campaign achieved incredible results, including a 20 percent increase in demand for Avianca, more than 140 thousand social media impressions and 35 million social media impressions from the Twitter Chat.
2015 North America Most Innovative Campaign of the Year: New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau
New Orleans tourism has steadily recovered over the past decade, and to jump-start the 2015 warm weather season the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau (NOCVB)—working through Expedia Media Solutions to partner with the Travelocity integrated marketing communications team—brought the world-renowned Travelocity Roaming Gnome to highlight all the city has to offer. An integrated social media campaign and interactive landing pages featured the bearded traveler enjoying a customized itinerary of activities that make New Orleans so unique, including: braving a ghost tour, joining in a Bourbon Street line band, meandering the French Quarter, eating at the famous Commander’s Palace, jumping on a Natchez steamboat ride, and more. The successful campaign also included strategic, multi-channel promotion highlighting the great culture, food and people of New Orleans. As a result, the campaign dramatically increased exposure to—and awareness of—the city and its tourism opportunities as well as grew Travelocity visitor demand in the market by double digits year over year. In particular, the display and email activities drove 4.5 million impressions, as part of the broader campaign.
2015 North America Hotel Campaign of the Year: Hilton Worldwide
Looking to drive consumer interest leading into the busy summer season, Hilton Worldwide partnered with Expedia Media Solutions to reach highly qualified audiences from Hilton’s top markets in Canada, Europe, Mexico and the U.S. Leveraging targeted audience insights, the campaign influenced travelers at the right moment to drive demand for Hilton Worldwide. As a result, Hilton Worldwide saw a significant return during the incredibly competitive summer travel season.
2015 North America Airline Campaign of the Year: Korean Air
Korean Air was focused on increasing visibility and flight bookings from the U.S. and Canada to its Asia destinations as well as SAO Paolo. The campaign featured a strategic media mix, including targeted display, dedicated emails, audience extension and social media integration through Twitter Chats with ticket giveaways. Finally, a customized landing page was built with the Korea Tourism Organization to highlight the rich history, culture and culinary adventures of the country – all brought together by flights presented from Korean Air. The campaign resulted in two million in demand through its duration and a 30:1 ROAS.
2015 North America Destination Campaign of the Year: Destination BC
To raise its brand profile and encourage more U.S. travelers to visit British Columbia, Destination BC worked with Expedia Media Solutions to develop an interactive microsite to educate, inspire and drive sustained interest in the region. The ‘Destination BC Concierge Service’ enables travelers to create their ideal trip based on all British Columbia has to offer – adventure, outdoor activities, cultural tours, music festivals and culinary pursuits. This creative approach has already seen incredible results including an increase in year-over-year demand this past summer by more than 45 percent. The campaign, which recently shifted from summer to the winter season, will continue to see results through the beginning of 2016.
2015 Latin America TravelAds Campaign of the Year: Grand Velas Riviera Maya
The Grand Velas Riviera Maya, a premium property located in the Riviera Maya in Mexico—one of the most competitive travel markets—leveraged TravelAds as a key strategy to maximize exposure and drive demand. By monitoring and managing its TravelAds in real time, and using Scheduled Ads to boost specific time periods and promotions, the Grand Velas Riviera Maya saw significant results: so far this year TravelAds drove 45 percent of Grand Velas Riviera Maya room night demand and a 32:1 ROAS.
2015 North America TravelAds Campaign of the Year: Thompson Miami Beach
As part of its overall advertising and marketing strategy, the one-year young Thompson Miami Beach hotel began using TravelAds to draw customers to its new inventory and compete as a smaller-scale hotel brand among the extremely saturated Miami Beach market. TravelAds enabled extra exposure by prominent placements, calling out features of the property and location as well as promotions. So far in 2015, the hotel’s integrated strategy contributed greatly to the growth of its leisure business with a 5:1 ROAS to-date.
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. Expedia Media Solutions is operated by Expedia, Inc. For more information, visit www.advertising.expedia.com.
About the Expedia group
The Expedia group (NASDAQ: EXPE) is one of the world’s largest travel companies, with an extensive brand portfolio that includes leading online travel brands, such as:
- Expedia.com®, a leading full service online travel agency with localized sites in 31 countries
- Hotels.com®, the hotel specialist with localized sites in more than 60 countries
- Hotwire®, a leading discount travel site that offers opaque deals in 12 countries throughout North America, Europe and Asia
- Travelocity®, a pioneer in online travel and a leading online travel agency in the US and Canada
- Egencia®, a leading corporate travel management company
- eLong™, a leading mobile and online travel service provider in China
- Venere.com™, the online hotel reservation specialist in Europe
- trivago®, a leading online hotel metasearch company with sites in 51 countries
- Wotif Group, a leading operator of travel brands in the Asia-Pacific region, including Wotif.com ®, lastminute.com.au®, travel.com.au, Asia Web Direct®, LateStays.com and GoDo.com.au
- Expedia Local Expert®, a provider of online and in-market concierge services, activities, experiences and ground transportation in hundreds of destinations worldwide
- Classic Vacations®, a top luxury travel specialist
- Expedia® CruiseShipCenters®, a provider of exceptional value and expert advice for travelers booking cruises and vacations through its network of 180 franchise locations across North America
- CarRentals.com™, the premier car rental booking company on the web
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 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.