Rental Revenue Increased Six Times After Revamping Shell Vacations Hospitality Website

by Marge Lennon
Owner
Lennon Communications Group

Today’s technology-savvy consumers are booking vacations in record-breaking numbers as hospitality websites currently generate over 50% of all hotel reservations. Travel now ranks as the #1 activity among Internet consumers with more travel purchased online than every other category combined. Of those who do not purchase via a website, about 73% use various sites to obtain research and ultimately book their travel directly with the travel provider.

• According to PhoCusWright, a national market research firm specializing in consumer travel trends, 92% of American travelers have used the Internet in the last month. These same travelers are expected to purchase over $136 billion in online travel sales this year.

• Emarketer estimates that 41.3 million U.S. households will book travel online in 2007, representing 52.5% of all US households.
Research has revealed that today’s online travel buyer generally prefers taking a series of smaller vacations, buying record amounts of travel products and services on the Internet, according to The PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Survey Ninth Edition. Long weekend trips are now the most popular type of leisure travel with more than twice as many of these trips taken than full-week vacations.

Online search engines like Google and Yahoo! play a major role in influencing where and what travelers purchase. Increasingly popular websites like TripAdvisor.com and Sabre-owned IGOUGO.com are impacting travel decisions as travelers seek opinions from other travelers.

So how does all this affect the timeshare industry? “As more and more timeshare companies realize the importance of rental programs,” says Susan Kelley, Senior Vice President of Shell Vacations Hospitality, “strong web-based marketing will be as important in the timeshare industry as it currently is with conventional hotels.”

Shell Vacations sells a points-based product: Shell Vacations Club. When a SVC member uses their points for anything other than resort accommodations, these “external benefits” cost money. SVC pays for these benefits by renting room inventory. This process of converting unused inventory into revenue is known as “monetization” and remains a challenge as the number of SVC members using external benefits continues to grow. A strong rental program is vital.

“About two years ago, we recognized that our website was outdated”, said Kelley. “We knew that our website would require a major makeover to take advantage of new technologies and capitalize on the volume of travel transactions taking place online. We also knew that 70% of online travelers indicated that a website’s use of video, pictures and online maps had a strong influence on the travel they purchased.”

Added Kelley, “But having an attractive website is only one part of the equation. Success in online marketing comes from methods used to lead consumers to your site. To accomplish this, we needed an expert in web marketing. Johnson had just the credentials. She had previously served in a similar position with ARAMARK Parks & Resorts, a Philadelphia-based company, where she was responsible for marketing and selling national and state park destinations. She had also been a partner in a web development firm that specialized in websites for hotels and destinations and had first-hand expertise in creating effective online marketing programs.

Shell Vacations Hospitality Website Has Major Makeover
“The Shell Vacations Hospitality website was languishing and had failed to generate significant room rental revenue,” says Johnson. “We began to focus on a more efficient use of our advertising and marketing dollars via Internet channels, since the web is open 24x7x365 and reaches a global audience with results instantly measured.”

Shell Vacations Hospitality began the transformation process in mid 2006, conferring with web development companies and hotel companies with unique locations. They selected Hospitality eBusiness Strategies, Inc. (HeBS) one of the leading Internet marketing and distribution consulting firms for hospitality and travel companies.

The next step was researching various online marketing and distribution strategies, creating budgets, selecting booking engines and establishing search engine procedures. Today, customers want a more interactive exchange. The new Shell Vacations Hospitality site contains strategies like “opt-in” email, allowing visitors to elect to participate, making the site even more interactive.

“A successful website includes content relevant to the product it is promoting,” explains Johnson. “This means it is important to enhance our resort descriptions by including area and attraction information about each of our locations. To ensure that our site was optimized, we implemented a link strategy with websites of featured attractions in our resort communities.”

Continues Johnson, “Just six months after having online marketing systems in place and launching our new site, the results were so amazing, even we were impressed! Revenue booked through the new website was more than SIX TIMES the dollar volume of rentals generated from the old website for the same time period!”

A major benefit in the world of online marketing is the ability to measure campaigns immediately. If a specific listing does not produce any bookings within a designated time, a company can quickly determine what is wrong and fix it or remove it completely. With the new site, the Shell Vacations Hospitality team is able to provide real-time ROI analysis and compare the results of different campaigns.

The company knows that it must continuously monitor, evaluate and update their site. This will be accomplished by tracking visitors through the site, the number of pages viewed, and where they exit. This helps to identify the pages that require changes or enhancements.

Concludes Tracy Sherles, President of the Shell Vacations Club and Shell Vacations Hospitality, “The greatest benefit to all of this is that our Club is self-sustaining. We can continue to sell our Shell Vacations Club product and promote the members’ ability to use their points for nearly a million benefits, which is a tremendous attraction to the prospective customer. The increased room revenue generated by our enhanced website in conjunction with our other revenue generating marketing programs enables us to pay for these owner benefits and continue to grow the Shell Vacations Club. Everyone wins: the sales and marketing staff and our valued Club members.”

To check out the new website, please visit Shellvacationshospitality.com.