January 29, 2020
Business at the ice cream shop across the street has been a bit slow lately. A snowy winter followed by a cold and rainy spring is not great for business. But soon enough they will have a line out the door. You can’t scoop ice cream fast enough when the sun is shining.
Any hotel manager can relate: hotels experience seasonality. But, unlike ice cream shops, hotels cannot simply increase inventory when demand is high and scale back when demand is low. Hotels have a fixed inventory and this can be a challenge when it comes to achieving their average daily rate and occupancy goals.
Which brings us to the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo, Japan: a luxury hotel in a modern tower in the heart of the Shinjuku City ward – Tokyo’s commercial and administrative center. With popular amenities like a fitness center and a pool, as well as a Japanese Tea Ceremony Room, a detailed website, and a prime location, they were confident that, if they could be considered by travel shoppers, they would be able to convert travelers.
TravelAds Sponsored Listings—premium placements in hotel search results that appear alongside hotel search results—are designed convert those travel shoppers who are ready to book. TravelAds increases a hotel’s exposure to a highly qualified audience designed expressly to help hotels appear on the search results page. Sponsored Listings are customizable, and with the help of a dedicated TravelAds expert, Keio Plaza tailored their ad content to target their ideal travel shopper. Ads are only shown to travelers when the advertising hotel has available inventory and advertisers only pay when a traveler clicks on their listing. This cost-per-click (CPC) model makes TravelAds a great solution for advertisers who are looking to increase conversions regardless of budget. And the Keio Plaza Hotel was a great candidate for this solution.
“Working closely with my TravelAds representative, our TravelAds campaign performed well and we are very happy with the results. The system is very easy to use and the live-reporting feature allows me to check results any time I want. I will use this product again.” – Yuki Ogino, Keio Plaza Hotel
The Keio Plaza built their TravelAds campaign to target specific low-occupancy dates using the Scheduled Ads functionality and focused on driving room bookings during these periods. Using near real-time campaign analytics, the Keio Plaza Hotel was able to monitor ad performance and make on-going adjustments to optimize their campaign. The combination of easy, real-time tracking and adjustable targeting allowed them to achieve an extraordinary return on investment. After running TravelAds for just one month, the hotel became the highest producing hotel in the Tokyo market across Expedia.co.jp.
Using sponsored ads to drive room nights during periods of low booking was a successful approach for the Keio Plaza Hotel. Watch this short TravelAds video to learn more about how hotel advertisers use the TravelAds tool to drive revenue.
