Do This, Not That: Bandwango Hotels Edition

What we’ve learned about working with your biggest stakeholder

People aren’t coming to your destination just to stay in hotels. But how do you break that to your hotel stakeholders?

Here at Bandwango, one of the key questions we get from partners is in regards to how other destinations use our platform to work alongside their hotels and drive real, measurable results.

Room nights are a critical KPI for so many destinations. So, how does our technology work to drive that metric?

Major Learnings That Guide Bandwango Strategy

Discounts abound

What we mean: The travel space is saturated with hotel deals – from OTA’s to the hoteliers themselves. Sure, some consumers may be looking at your landing pages to find deals on hotels in your destination, but competing in a space where consumers have loyalties to OTAs or brands makes it difficult for your discount to cut through the clutter.

How we know: When discounts for hotels are included in Bandwango Savings Passes, they receive few to no redemptions. In fact, their performance has been so out-of-sync with our usual platform metrics that we make it a “best practice” not to include hotel deals in these types of passes because we’ve determined consumers are not looking in a passport for hotel deals.

People prefer “a la carte” experience pairing

What we mean: The traditional approach to hotel packages assumes people are traveling for the same experiences – like visiting your top attractions. People like the flexibility of customizing the offers that fit their travel plans verses selecting a singular hotel and experience duo. Hotel packaging, at the least in the traditional sense, is a thing of the past.

How we know: Passports that focus on unique experiences and offer flexibility perform better. In our examples below, Si San Antonio performed well and drove redemptions at partner locations because they allowed people to choose the attractions, dining experiences and retail outlets that fit within their ideal trip.

How Bandwango Passports Work with Hotel Bookings

Bandwango provides a flexible and useful tool for tracking real people in your destination – hotels included. Check out some of the successful ways clients have used the above strategies to guide their passport creation.

Reservations with Added Value

Visit Salt Lake worked alongside Bandwango and our valued partner, RootRez, to drive demand and track visitor activities in the destination post-pandemic. This campaign allowed potential visitors to purchase a room night and receive a Visit Salt Lake Connect Pass (a Bandwango product) as an added value.

The initiative reported 1,000 reservations made due to the campaign, which ran from August through December 2020. Additionally, Bandwango delivered 51 Connect Passes to this audience, which was part of an 86.6% value add activation. (The activation also included Delta Airlines, Sinclair and Super Pass.)

A La Carte Experiences as Perks

This past summer, Visit San Antonio launched their summer campaign with a focus on getting people back into the destination to stay in hotels and experience the city. The inspirational campaign the destination launched drove people to a hotel deal landing page and promoted the VIP hotel passport as a perk for reserving a room.

The passport was available to guests at more than 50 hotels throughout the city. Plus, it included food, beverage, retail and attraction deals, so guests could customize their experience. The campaign, which wrapped in September, confirmed more than 2,700 hotel guests signed up for the passport.

If you’re interested in how other clients work with their hotel partners to produce amazing results, reach out to schedule a demo – or, if you’re a current client, reach out to your Client Success Manager.