Palladium Hotel Group
Italy
August 2022
Benchmark and data-driven intelligence to define campaigns’ segmentation and target markets aimed at boost a hotel opening profitability
Context
Grand Palladium Sicilia Resort & Spa opened its doors in May 2021, following a delayed launch initially planned for 2020 due to the pandemic, which led to a significant decline in travel and hotel occupancy over the next 24 months. After navigating the most critical phase of recovery, the surge in pent-up demand spurred a strong rebound in 2022. This shift in travel trends created new opportunities for hotels. For Palladium Hotel Group, this opening was part of its luxury expansion strategy in key destinations, targeting this specific traveler segment. The aim was to develop an effective marketing mix, understand key source market behaviors, and analyze the competitive landscape for both the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
Key goals
Overall, the analysis aimed at forecasting the market evolution relevant to the destination and the hotel market and demand for Sicily, using data intelligence to make decisions in terms of promotion, revenue management, services and products investment and overall targeted marketing efforts, to ensure awareness, occupancy, and profitability for this new opening.
Approach
Mabrian’s travel intelligence provided a comprehensive landscape, with insight from the destination’s performance, including seasonality, hotel market size and potential impact weighed per visitation figures; hotel and other accommodations rates evolution compared with competitors and across key source markets; customer experience and differentiation traits; go-to-market strategies based on search and planning habits from key source markets; and potential partners to engage in co-marketing activities to enhance promotion.
Data included flight capacity and searches, seasonality booking behaviour (and opportunities that laid behind them), hotel prices and spending structure, accommodation customer experience, sentiment and interest for key destination attractions and its alignment with the target segments for the hotel brand, categorized per source markets within the key target segment.
Results
Insights from Mabrian’s travel intelligence laid the foundation for defining specific customer journeys for each inbound market, considering their unique behavioral profiles, priorities, pain points, and potential marketing channels. France Germany and UK were defined as the key demand drivers for their spontaneous demand for Sicily, the air connectivity, the hotel category demand and their tourist interests and spending behaviour.
Our expert team used this data to predict the performance of the hotel market in the destination, particularly within the 4-star segment, to grow significantly in the destination for the next seasons.
Palladium Hotel Group was able to assess price elasticity of demand, compared to the overall destination, as well as with other competitors brands, to define source-market and seasonal revenue management policies that contribute to reach occupancy goals, boost spending in destination and, in particular, to increase +7% year over year ADRs in 4-stars segment in the destination.
