Valamar Hotels & Resorts’ Introduction To Performance Marketing Results In A Triple Figure Increase In Sales For Croatia’s Largest Tourism Brand 

Background

Valamar Hotels and Resorts (www.valamar.com) is a Croatian hospitality management company, operating 39 properties in the most popular tourist regions in Croatia. Valamar is the leading  Croatian hotel brand with the country’s largest tourism portfolio.

Tourism in Croatia has grown exponentially in recent years, with increasing demand for high quality hotels in the popular resorts of Istria and Dubrovnik. Valamar Hotels & Resorts wanted to capitalize on this growth with a marketing campaign that developed its brand reach across Europe and the US and increased online direct sales.

Strategy

Valamar partnered with AffiliRed, the performance marketing company for the travel industry. The company identified specific countries with high traffic and sales that Valamar could focus on and target. Countries included Italy, Germany, Austria and Russia.  

They worked closely with key publishers across the Tradetracker and Shareasale networks to produce targeted brand exposure. By using the network as a virtual sales channel, Valamar ran a CPA model, updating affiliates with offers and special product rates. AffiliRed ran regular analysis of promotions and offers to determine what worked well for the brand.

The strategy comprised several different activities:

  • Regular updating of promotions and creative.
  • Offering exclusive promotional codes to top publishers.
  • Giving publishers special commissions per performance achieved.
  • Running contests among publishers to incentive them to promote the brand.
  • Running display and retargeting campaigns all around Europe with top agencies.
  • Running targeted search engine campaigns to open new markets.
  • Partnering with vertical sites and key websites in the online travel scene.
  • Promotion of Valamar Hotels in the main affiliate events across Europe and North America.

Results

The campaign ran from 2013 to 2014. During that period, sales have increased by 577%, with revenue up by 558%.

The Valamar website has experienced a 93% increase in the number of visits, comparing the same period from April to September in 2013 and 2014.

Year-on-year conversion rates have improved by 200%. 

Next Steps

Valamar plans to capitalise on the success of this affiliate programme. It will be rolling out more offers throughout 2014 and 2015 and introducing new incentives,  including promocodes and affiliate competitions.

Iva Kutle Skrlec, Marketing Director of Valamar, said: “This was our first venture into performance marketing and the results have been staggering. Despite this landmark moment for the company we believe that we have just scratched the surface of what performance marketing can do for us. We plan to increase our efforts in this area over the coming months focusing on new products for 2015.”

 AffiliRed’s CEO and founder, Diego Gomila, added: “We are always excited when a brand that’s new to performance marketing is able to see the benefits to their business. We are looking forward to working with Valamar over the coming months to develop the campaign further.”