How Labelium Helped Club Med Regain Market Share In The Post-COVID era via automation and a focus on domestic travel
At Labelium, we believe that our unfailing focus on continuous improvement is the key to our agility and ability to adapt to the most challenging contexts. We are proud to share some of our early 2021 success stories, and how we support leading international brands to emerge stronger out of this crisis.
Discover how our lead travel search experts were able to leverage the power of automation via Search Ads 360 to help Club Med rise ahead of the competition as the travel industry starts its road to recovery.
The Challenge
The gradual recovery of the travel industry – linked with advancement in vaccination rates and the lifting of travel restrictions – is unsurprisingly leading to a race for market share amongst the top brands. The changes in consumer expectations over the past year mean that loyalties from the past are not to be taken for granted, and customers will be willing to discover new brands that meet their demands.
In this context, Club Med, the leading chain of all-inclusive resorts, mandated Labelium to adapt its search strategy in order to better meet customer queries and need for information, as well as to grow market share while remaining cost-effective in an increasingly competitive market landscape.
Our Approach
Labelium crafted a new search strategy, drafting a campaign structure that would maximize the potential of automation. The key to success here was to enable the new search structure to catch and respond to new auction signals in real-time in order to maximize responsiveness and relevance to Club Med prospects.
Below are the highlights of the methodology that was deployed:
- Prioritization of domestic queries: the majority of the budget was dedicated to local campaigns and domestic travel as travel restrictions were only reopening gradually. We then conducted A/B testing on a variety of messaging and packages (early booking offering, last-minute deals) to best cater to the different needs of these local customers (families, couples, friends reuniting…)
- Shift to Search Ads 360 auction time bidding: this algorithm enabled bid optimization in real-time at query level by analyzing different contextual signals, allowing us to significantly reduce our unitary costs through faster machine learning.
- Budget management fluidity: the key to success was to scale fast where it mattered most, reinvesting some of the budget liberated through cost efficiencies into highly qualified queries to increase market share.
Results
This new search strategy enabled Club Med to achieve a 40% lower CPC than their average competitor set while simultaneously gaining a 30% higher impression share than that same competitor set. As a result of this, bookings for S1 went up by 174% and domestic travel drove 44% of total sales in S1 2021, compared to S1 2019.
“Labelium has a difficult task post-COVID to help us grow our market share in an increasingly competitive market while keeping a healthy budget. Their search experts were able to deliver to our expectations while enabling long-term strategies”.
Delia Andronache, Americas Online Traffic Acquisition Manager at Club Med
About Club Med
Club Med specializes in premium all-inclusive vacations packages for families – with absolutely no hidden costs. There are 65 award-winning resorts worldwide, from tropical island oases, thrilling ski retreats, exotic adventures to luxurious cruises.
