Expedia Media Solutions Announces 2016 North America & Latin America Partner Award Recipients

The Hawai‘i Tourism Authority, Emirates Airlines, Excellence Group Luxury Hotels & Resorts, Hawaiian Airlines, Insitituto Guatemalteco de Turismo, Outrigger Hotels & Resorts, Visit Europe, and 1 Hotel South Beach recognized for marketing campaign excellence

Las Vegas, December 8, 2016 – Expedia® Media Solutions, the advertising sales division of Expedia, Inc., today announced the recipients of its 2016 North America and Latin America Partner Awards. Presented at the annual Expedia Partner Conference, the awards acknowledge partner campaigns that demonstrate innovation, creativity and achievement in travel marketing.

“This year’s award-winning campaigns showcase the great work of our partners who are continuously pushing the boundaries of the travel marketing space through the use of innovative technology, creative content and sophisticated targeting,” said Wendy Olson-Killion, global senior director of business development at Expedia Media Solutions. “We work closely with each of our partners to develop campaigns that use creativity and innovation to engage audiences in fresh and compelling ways. From the first travel marketing campaign to integrate facial recognition technology, to interactive quizzes, multi-market engagement, sponsored placements and much more, this year’s winning campaigns highlight the effectiveness of strategic collaboration, and we’re thrilled to recognize our partners.”

The partner awards recognize campaigns that leverage media solutions across travel marketing categories, and include the following recipients this year.

2016 Most Innovative Campaign of the Year: The Hawai‘i Tourism Authority

The Hawai‘i Tourism Authority (HTA) wanted to increase awareness in key global markets and drive travel demand for the Hawaiian Islands, as well as connect with millennials through innovative technology and inspirational content. In partnership with Expedia Media Solutions, HTA launched ‘Discover Your Aloha,’ an interactive marketing campaign that incorporates facial recognition software to produce customized travel guides based on users’ reactions to inspirational video footage of the Hawaiian Islands. ‘Discover Your Aloha’ is the first campaign from Expedia Media Solutions that features facial recognition software, and this creative approach to traveler engagement has already seen impressive results, including a 53:1 return on investment (ROI) to-date.

2016 Latin America Campaign of the Year: Instituto Guatemalteco de Turismo

Guatemala is one of the most exotic destinations in Central America, but the Instituto Guatemalteco de Turismo recognized that it needed to do more to compete with the robust efforts of other countries in the region. Turning to Expedia Media Solutions, the tourism board developed a campaign designed to increase destination awareness, highlight the diversity of Guatemala’s tourist offerings and reach targeted and qualified audiences on relevant points of sale. The teams launched a rich, multi-platform campaign, which includes home page takeovers, email and social components targeting travelers in five key markets, including the U.S., U.K., Germany, France and Canada.

2016 North America Hotel Campaign of the Year: Outrigger Hotels & Resorts

With the goal of being recognized as the world’s premiere beachfront resort brand – offering authentic, localized experiences in iconic vacation destinations from Fiji to the Maldives – Outrigger Resorts launched a collaborative partnership campaign with Expedia Media Solutions, O‘ahu Visitor’s Bureau and Hawaiian Airlines to bring the Travelocity Roaming Gnome to O‘ahu and reach a global audience. The multi-faceted campaign included social promotions and contests, audience extension through Passport Ads as well as a merchandising and email promotion offering cash back on travel packages and vacations booked to Hawai‘i. Overall, the Roaming Gnome campaign was a huge success – generating a 54:1 ROI and the Passport Ads campaign resulting in a 32:1 ROI.

2016 North America Airline Campaign of the Year: Emirates Airlines

Looking to expand awareness for their routes and destinations beyond Dubai, Emirates Airlines worked with Expedia Media Solutions to develop a creative partnership campaign featuring an interactive game called “Chase the Sun,” which targeted Expedia users in the U.S. The campaign highlighted the additional Emirates Airlines destinations of Bangkok, Hyderabad, Delhi, and Mumbai, and in a first for the airline, they experimented with social media elements to support the interactive online game. A sweepstakes for two round-trip tickets to the featured Emirates Airline destinations helped build awareness, as 28 percent of users selected Bangkok as their preferred destination. Additionally, user engagement was high, with the average time spent on the “Chase the Sun” site exceeding three minutes.

2016 North America Airline Campaign of the Year: Hawaiian Airlines

Hawaiian Airlines and Expedia Media Solutions partnered to develop a marketing campaign that would increase brand awareness, drive conversions and position the airline as the top choice for travelers visiting Hawaii. The strategy was to highlight Hawaiian Airlines’ unique product differentiators and brand messages, including its ranking as the number one on-time airline for 13 consecutive years, twin-aisle planes and unique passenger perks like complementary meals and welcome cocktail. The campaign was designed to reach travelers at all stages of the purchase funnel, across all Expedia points of sale, and has resulted in a 38:1 and 16:1 ROI on Expedia and Orbitz, respectively.

2016 North America Destination Campaign of the Year: Visit Europe

With the goal of driving bookings and engagement from U.S. travelers, Visit Europe and Expedia Media Solutions launched a two-part campaign that ran in Spring and Fall 2016. The first part of the campaign, designed to drive demand, featured creative encouraging Americans to explore the mountains, cities and beaches of Europe. The second part, designed to generate engagement, invited Americans to test their knowledge of Europe’s hidden treasures through an online quiz, for a chance to win a trip to Europe. As a result of the campaign, U.S. travelers spent more than 112,000 minutes engaging with Visit Europe content, the campaign generated nearly 14,000 sweepstakes entries to-date and the spring portion drove in $18 million in demand.

2016 Latin America TravelAds Campaign of the Year: Excellence Group Luxury Hotels & Resorts

The Excellence Group worked with Expedia Media Solutions to launch a TravelAds campaign that would generate awareness for its high-end resorts. With TravelAds, Excellence Group retained a consistent presence on the Expedia website throughout the year, and utilized strategic placements to announce new hotel openings, relaunches and renovations for its properties. The TravelAds campaign has performed extremely well for the high-end resort chain, resulting in 222:1 ROAS for the year.

2016 North America TravelAds Campaign of the Year: 1 Hotel South Beach

The 1 Hotel South Beach, a luxury historic oceanfront property, leveraged TravelAds to increase visibility in the highly-saturated South Beach market. Through TravelAds, the Expedia Media Solutions team helped the Miami hotel maintain a consistent presence to reach travel bookers across all channels. As a result, the TravelAds campaign drove more than 50 percent of the hotel’s room night demand, and overall the campaign generated a 13:1 ROAS for the year.

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 a division of Expedia, Inc. For more information, visit www.advertising.expedia.com.

About Expedia, Inc.

Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE) is the world’s largest online travel company, with an extensive brand portfolio that includes leading online travel brands, such as:

  • Expedia.com®, a leading full service online travel company with localized sites in 33 countries
  • Hotels.com®, a preeminent global lodging expert operating in more than 65 countries and 35 languages with its award winning Hotels.com® Rewards loyalty program
  • Orbitz Worldwide, including leading U.S. travel websites Orbitz.com and CheapTickets.com, as well as ebookers, a full service travel brand with websites in seven European countries
  • Expedia® Affiliate Network (EAN), a global B2B brand that powers the hotel business of leading airlines, top consumer brands, online travel agencies and thousands of other partners through its API and template solutions
  • trivago®, a leading online hotel search with sites in 55 countries worldwide
  • HomeAway®, a global online marketplace for the vacation rental industry, which also includes the VRBO, VacationRentals.comand BedandBreakfast.com brands, among others
  • Travelocity®, a leading online travel brand in the U.S. and Canada delivering customer service when and where our customers need it with the Customer 1st Guarantee
  • Hotwire®, inspiring spontaneous travel through Hot Rate® deals
  • Expedia® Media Solutions, the advertising sales division of Expedia, Inc. that builds media partnerships and enables brand advertisers to target a highly-qualified audience of travel consumers
  • Classic Vacations®, a top luxury travel specialist
  • CarRentals.com, a premier online car rental booking company with localized sites in 13 countries
  • Expedia Local Expert®, a provider of online and in-market concierge services, activities, experiences and ground transportation in over a thousand destinations worldwide
  • Venere.com™, an online hotel reservation specialist in Europe
  • Expedia® CruiseShipCenters®, a provider of exceptional value and expert advice for travelers booking cruises and vacations through its network of over 225 retail travel agency franchises across North America

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