Sojern, travel’s leading performance marketing engine, has announced the opening of its new office in Dublin focused on servicing the European market with its RevDirectÊoffering, a multichannel, pay-for-performance, direct bookings solution for independent hoteliers.
Sojern brings its specialised data set of 350 million global traveller profiles, including billions of predictive travel intent data points to target travellers across multi-channels ensuring hotels adverts are placed in front of the right consumers at the right time to drive direct bookings. In a unique marketplace model RevDirect delivers potential travellers to the hotel’s website at no upfront cost, only charging the hotel if the traveller books direct and actually completes a stay.Ê The “pay-on-the-stay” model eliminates upfront advertising costs and creates a cash-flow friendly payment process.Ê Hotels also gain access to state-of-the-art multichannel optimization technology, including a self-managed platform with audience, market and property insights to help them better understand their customers.
The newly opened office is led by Regional Sales Director EMEA, Angela Canny. Angela has over two decades of experience in the hotel and hospitality sector having worked with local, regional and global brands including Marriott, Le Meridien, BDL Ireland, Guinness and Rezidor.
“With a history of hosting some of the world’s tech giants such as Google and Facebook and an impressive local talent pool, Dublin is the perfect location to serve the European market,”Êsaid MsÊCanny.Ê”Hotels want more direct bookings, but they are challenged to find the consistent marketing budget and digital expertise needed to make direct demand generation work in a complex online world – and Sojern recognizes that.”
Sojern expands into Ireland at a time when both digital advertising spend and inbound tourism in Ireland are growing at a rapid clip. PwC predicts a 16.5 per cent growth per year (CAGR) in Irish digital ad spend during the period 2016-2020. Last year was also a ground-breaking year for Irish tourism with the number of visitors growing by 10 percent to 8.8 million. The Irish tourism industry in 2016 was worth over Û8 billion annually – a new record. According to the Irish Hotels Federation (IHF), travel brands are targeting higher value and higher spending markets such as the United States, Australia and China to offset a potential downturn in the British market due to Brexit and the sterling differential. The continued expansion of direct air services coupled with the dollar riding at a 13-year high against the euro make long-haul regions a strong area of opportunity for Irish travel brands. Sojern brings independent hoteliers the ability to target these affluent traveller audiences and drive direct bookings while maximising marketing budgets and minimising risk.Ê ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ
Lough Eske Castle, a Solis Hotel & Spa, just outside of Donegal Town in the northwest region of Ireland were early adopters of RevDirect.Ê The hotel was keen to market Donegal as the go-to destination spot above more traditional holiday destinations in Ireland, such as Kerry. Its goal was to appeal to in-market travellers more effectively and drive bookings directly to their site.
Through prospecting undecided in-market travellers, Lough Eske Castle can more meaningfully engage with potential guests, driving them to visit their site and book directly.Ê
“We are more than happy with the results of RevDirect, quite simply, Sojern is giving us the most bang for our buck,” said Lisa Marshall, Director of Sales and Marketing at Lough Eske Castle.
From December 2015 to February 2017, Sojern drove an additional 330 stays and 155,950 EUR in revenue as well as an additional 55 stays and 30,671 EUR in revenue in future bookings beyond February 2017.
The company has expanded its headcount to 300 globally, reported strong growth and financial results, and recently teamed up with Google to release its 2017 Hotel Report exploring and explaining the modern traveller’s path to purchase.
