Villa Plus gets smarter with web analytics by selecting IBM Coremetrics

Villa Plus is one of the largest villa tour operators in the UK, covering 13 destinations in 4 countries. In response to growing customer demand, it plans to increase its property inventory by nearly 40 percent over the next two years. Villa Plus takes pride in delivering outstanding customer service with dedicated service centers at each destination, and aims to offer its customers the same high level of service through optimization of their website.

The Challenge

Villa Plus implemented an ambitious growth strategy to increase property inventory in order to provide their customers more choice and availability. With inventory set to grow by 18 percent during the first year and by another 20 percent during the second year, optimizing the online merchandising effectiveness of new and existing properties is paramount to success. Furthermore, reducing unsold inventory and maximizing average booking value will increase overall revenues.

Key to the success of the strategy was a new website design and the release of a new e-commerce live booking and payment module. The free analytics package Villa Plus was using did not deliver a data platform that was sophisticated enough to meet the complex needs of a specialist travel company. Simon Lifford, Business Manager at Villa Plus, explains, “Villa Plus has used a competitor’s analytics package for the last six years, but as we grew, so did our requirement for accurate data on customers who booked and the prospects who came to our site and left without booking.”

The Solution

Seeing the huge potential for insight rich analytics could bring to a travel company, it was an easy decision for Villa Plus to select IBM® Digital Analytics and IBM Digital Analytics Explore to drive their online strategies.

Villa Plus was also attracted to Coremetrics for the strategic consultancy that was available. Lifford explains, “IBM was one of the few companies which had a dedicated expert analyst specific to the travel sector, so it made perfect sense to enlist their help in the implementation process.”

Villa Plus engaged in a five-day workshop with the Coremetrics strategic services team specializing in the travel and hospitality sector. This enabled Villa Plus to identify all of their data tracking requirements to meet current business goals, identify emerging trends and understand visitor behaviors, such as evolving demographic patterns.

Villa Plus now leverages Coremetrics to optimize how they merchandise their properties, from the holiday search results listings to the property pages. Villa Plus also has the ability to measure conversion according to the position the villa appeared in the property listings resulting from a visitor’s holiday search. This allows for easy determination of whether or not a lack of site exposure is causing low interest in a property.

By understanding the parameters the visitor searched for, such as destination, stay date or number of guests, Villa Plus can anticipate demand and where availability may be lacking. This insight helps the company add the right property at the right destination for the optimal occupancy size, and supports business cases for new destinations and market opportunities.

“IBM® Digital Analytics and IBM Digital Analytics Explore to drive their online strategies. Villa Plus was also attracted to Coremetrics for the strategic consultancy that was available. Lifford explains, “IBM was one of the few companies which had a dedicated expert analyst specific to the travel sector, so it made perfect sense to enlist their help in the implementation process.”

Villa Plus engaged in a five-day workshop with the Coremetrics strategic services team specializing in the travel and hospitality sector. This enabled Villa Plus to identify all of their data tracking requirements to meet current business goals, identify emerging trends and understand visitor behaviors, such as evolving demographic patterns.

Villa Plus now leverages Coremetrics to optimize how they merchandise their properties, from the holiday search results listings to the property pages. Villa Plus also has the ability to measure conversion according to the position the villa appeared in the property listings resulting from a visitor’s holiday search. This allows for easy determination of whether or not a lack of site exposure is causing low interest in a property.

By understanding the parameters the visitor searched for, such as destination, stay date or number of guests, Villa Plus can anticipate demand and where availability may be lacking. This insight helps the company add the right property at the right destination for the optimal occupancy size, and supports business cases for new destinations and market opportunities.

“Using Coremetrics to track a visitor’s residing country allows us to build a picture of why some users did not convert on the current website,” Lifford said. “For instance, if we saw high traffic levels coming from Germany coupled with a high attrition rate, we might assume that the problem was that the site was only in English. We could test the theory by adding language buttons to the website and tracking the attrition rate. Coremetrics allows us to identify new markets using intelligence rather than guesswork.”

All Villa Plus properties can be packaged with flights, car rentals, transfers, starter packs and insurance. Offering the right ancillary product at the right time maximizes average booking value. “We can now separate individual elements of the holiday package such as car rental, transfers, starter packs and insurance, allowing profitability analysis and cross-sell decisions to be made much more rapidly,” Lifford said. “We drive ancillary revenues by creating highly personalized
cross-sell offers.”

Coremetrics also allows Villa Plus to rationalize offline spend. By tracking where each visitor resides, the company can measure the impact of regional marketing initiatives such as local radio, billboard advertising and direct mail campaigns. The ability to tie offline activity to web traffic is a giant leap for a sector which is traditionally brochure based.

The Results

Villa Plus now has a solid data platform from which they can accurately track visitor booking behaviors, allowing them to optimize their online and offline marketing. Prior to using Coremetrics, Villa Plus could only assess page performance based on bounce rate. Now, they can assess the performance of the user journey across the website. “We have many more options available to us that help identify ways to drive up average booking value,” Lifford said.

For more information

To learn more about IBM Coremetrics, please contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner or visit the following website: ibm.com/software/marketing-solutions