Amadeus and SEPAQ Hotels win “Best Hotel and Lodging Online Campaign”.

A recent Amadeus iHotelier®-driven promotions campaign for SEPAQ Hotels took home the “Best Hotel and Lodging Online Campaign” at the 2022 Internet Advertising Competition (IAC). The winning campaign for SEPAQ Hotels demonstrated the flexibility and speed to deployment for creating and merchandising new promotions with the iHotelier Booking Engine. This marks the seventh year in a row that campaigns supported by Amadeus Reservations solutions have taken home top prizes at the IAC awards.

The Customer

SEPAQ (Société des établissements de plein air du Québec) is a public organization devoted to showcasing the natural beauty of the Canadian Province of Quebec through trips, experiences, and stays. Located in national parks, SEPAQ Hotels allow guests to experience the beauty of Canada while enjoying a 4-star experience.   

The Campaign

During the Spring of 2021, as COVID-19 began to subside and provinces reopened in Canada, the tourism industry was trying to get back on its feet. Understaffed hotels were dealing with a reduced workforce and needed to use technology to get customers excited about travelling again. The Quebec Tourism Board sought to help hoteliers recover while supporting local tourism by providing $75 CAD gift cards which could be utilized for local attractions within Quebec City for every two-night stay at 115 local area hotels. With only a single day from the incentive’s announcement on May 31st, 2021 until the program’s launch, SEPAQ was looking to quickly take advantage of the new gift card program to help drive bookings to their properties.  

Amadeus helped SEPAQ to promote the new gift card incentive quickly and easily to potential guests using the unique “Service Promotions” capabilities in the Amadeus iHotelier® Booking Engine – the guest-facing platform that allows guests to book stays on the SEPAQ website. Service Promotions allow hoteliers to discount and merchandise special offers (rather than just rates) to potential guests in order to make the booking more enticing and drive greater direct bookings. The Tourism Board gift card was a perfect use case and application for this feature, as it allowed SEPAQ Hotels to add greater guest value to each booking without having to discount their rates.  

SEPAQ utilized iHotelier Service Promotions to quickly create a new promotion for the gift card and merchandise it using display advertising on their own website as well as popular hotel metasearch sites (Google Hotels, Kayak, Trivago, etc.) and by featuring it in their booking flow. Potential guests shopping for rooms in the SEPAQ booking engine were then able to quickly assess the value of the new incentive, and instantly add the gift card to their booking, which helped increase booking conversion rates for SEPAQ and add additional value to the guest experience.  

The Results

With only a few minutes of work, SEPAQ Hotels was able to build the new gift card incentive and merchandise it along the shopper’s journey. They began receiving their gift card incentive-driven bookings within two hours. Within 30 days of the incentive program’s announcement SEPAQ had booked more than 200 stays through the gift card incentive campaign, representing 25% of all gift cards delivered by the Quebec Tourism Board to the 115 participating hotels. 

Read the full case study here.

Want to discover new ways to help your properties drive direct bookings and ancillary revenues? Reach out to us today to schedule a personalized demo of the powerful iHotelier Reservations and Booking Engine Platform.

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