Washington Park Hotel in Miami has been routinely selling out their rooms every night. However, their room sales were only through online travel agencies (OTA) and not through direct bookings, which meant a huge loss of profitability. In effort to boost direct booking sales, we looked to social media advertising to give the hotel that extra push.
The main focus for this initiative was to boost direct bookings. This meant we had to find the best vehicle to send traffic to a dedicated URL. Our choice was easy - Facebook Advertising. With a host of different targeting specifications and extended Audience Network, we felt this avenue for our promotion fit best.
By utilizing Facebook ads, it allowed for the hotel to simultaneously garner more awareness, engagement, and click-through rates in addition to boosting direct bookings. Target audiences were broken down into two main markets - locals in the immediate Miami area or the United States and international travelers from a selected list of countries. Audience interests encompassed everything from Miami-related keywords, general travel categories and lifestyle categories.
A dedicated photoshoot was scheduled to create the advertisement visuals. A curated shot list was created to highlight the hotel and details in addition to lifestyle shots in and around the property. The visuals & copy that were chosen for the advertisements captured the essence of the hotel being witty, flirty, and playful. The mix of classic hotel shots and eye-catching lifestyle shots garnered great response and engagement in the short timeframe the advertisements were launched.
In just 3 months and a limited budget, the Facebook ads received an overwhelming number of click-throughs and shares. While our main goal was to boost direct booking sales, the hotel also saw an immense increase in audience engagehttp://www.wphsouthbeach.com/ments across all their channels:
Total Link Clicks: 178,229
Total Reach: 2,777,463
Total Impressions: 5,600,391
