ADARA’s Site Impact helps Bloomington, Minnesota, CVB quantify the value of its online marketing investments
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, September 21, 2016 – ADARA, the travel industry’s leading data co-operative, today launched ADARA Site Impact, a new tool in the ADARA Impact suite of analytics products that provides destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and tourism board customers increased traveler intelligence, a holistic view of website effectiveness, and most importantly, insight into real travel outcomes.
ADARA’s Site Impact helped Bloomington Minnesota’s Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) to track its website’s influence on visitor purchase decisions. As a result, the CVB was able to gain advanced knowledge of its high-value travelers, how they book and spend, and identify untapped opportunities to increase market share and visitation. The website – BloomingtonMN.org – was able to attribute $315,000 in hotel revenue and nearly 1,200 bookings between May and June this year as a direct result of inbound traffic.
By analyzing and comparing this data with 6.8 million searches over a 12-month period, ADARA Site Impact identified key insights and outcomes for the CVB, including:
- Helping Bloomington understand that its website visitors spent an average of approximately 1.5 to 2 weeks searching for travel online, with flights booked an average of 1.5 months out – hotels, approximately 3.5 weeks out. This confirmed that two months ahead of travel is the “sweet spot” for increasing online marketing to BloomingtonMN.org.
- Revealing that 62% of Bloomington website visitors booked their hotel in Bloomington within 3 days of the website visit, and that the website was effective in converting visitors to bookings – demonstrating the site’s value as a booking tool, and the value of marketing investment in the site.
- Helping Bloomington rank the value of hotel Average Daily Rate (ADR) by feeder market, offering a better understanding of which markets are the most lucrative and therefore deserve a higher allocation of the DMO marketing budget.
Other results indicated that 56% of those searching and booking travel during the period were booking leisure trips, while 44% were booking business; 66% were female, and 34% were male. For trips booked during the period, the hotel Average Daily Rate (ADR) was $152 per room booked.
Jessica Schultz, Director Integrated Planning at MMGY Global who leads integrated strategy for Bloomington, said, “We work with destinations every day to help them create a better structure in which to analyze their media efforts. Tools like ADARA Site Impact allow us to draw larger conclusions on the economic impact those efforts have on the destination that were unavailable before.
What drew us to ADARA Site Impact initially for Bloomington was the collaboration and innovation the ADARA team was able to provide us to determine a new use case for the technology that could solve a missing piece in the data puzzle for Bloomington – how to more comprehensively track outbound hotel referrals and bookings from the destination website.
The ADARA solution helps us better understand the active traveler and the effect paid media and the destination website have on the entire booking process, allowing us data and insight to inform smarter marketing decisions.”
“We are excited to share the results of our Bloomington ADARA Site Impact study,” said Scott Garner, President, Data & Analytics at ADARA. “Together, ADARA Site Impact and Media Impact were developed for destination marketers and with their input, to provide insights and ROI that no other technology can. ADARA Site Impact offers unique insights into booking behavior across the traveler ecosystem to understand how the destination website influences the destination’s visitors – and help optimize revenue and generate higher ROI. We are excited that the DMO community has embraced ADARA Site Impact quickly, and appreciate Bloomington partnering with us in its launch.”
Complete results of the Case Study can be found here.
