Skift Take

DerbySoft released a Destination Ads Guide through the Marketing Services side of the travel tech company. This guide is designed to help travel industry operators boost visibility and harness fresh market demands in the recovery phase of the pandemic.

This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner.

As we stare down the final months of 2020, we see a travel sector transformed: a challenged industry eagerly preparing for the new.

While many market areas have had to rethink their approach as a result of Covid-19, fresh opportunities are presenting themselves. Looking beyond the recent pivots by the industry, travel is a certainty in the coming months especially with encouraging signs of an effective vaccine on the horizon. Positive news makes destination travel attainable and travelers are looking and booking summer plans already.

“We believe that using Destination Ads can be an excellent way for hotels to stand out from their competition. We have even made it easier for hoteliers to activate Destination Ads via Click, our easy to use AI powered platform, to gain maximum visibility whether it is on Google, Trivago, Tripadvisor or all in one,” said Kenishiro Nishizu, President, Marketing Services at DerbySoft. “Furthermore, rich data is available at your fingertips to analyze return of investment. As we move into recovery mode, we anticipate a good uptake for Destination Ads.”

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To give hotels an even more competitive edge in the unpredictable moment, travel-tech innovator DerbySoft has released a new Destination Ads Guide: a free, premium resource that helps properties boost brand awareness, get seen, and attract their share of the new market.

To get a taste, SkiftX unpacks and distils some of the guide’s key take home strategies for recovery. 

Coined in-house

Not heard about Destination Ads before? The term was coined by DerbySoft in-house, though it refers to existing ads in the marketplace, commonly referred to as Sponsored Ads or Sponsored Listings (Tripadvisor, Trivago), or Promotion Ads (Google, Bing).

DerbySoft recognized the similarity in UI, functionality and tech-side of this caliber of ads, and merged them under this new umbrella term.

At the same time, DerbySoft added ‘Destination Ads’ as a new campaign type in its Click metasearch management platform. This allows DerbySoft customers to access and launch Destination Ads from the same interface where they manage their traditional metasearch campaigns: convenient, in the one central place.

A new approach

Looking beyond the current state of the new normal—lockdowns, restrictions and limitations— hoteliers and tour operators are looking at their recovery and the new booking behaviors travelers are exhibiting right now for future destination travel.

One strategy that DerbySoft suggests is to approach Covid-19 recovery marketing like a new hotel opening. According to DerbySoft, the best decision in this climate is to uphold marketing expenditure and keep investing in a property’s visibility, while also leveraging off new marketing solutions.

The Destination Ads Guide offers salient tips on how to push properties to the top of destination search results as a way of driving a strong post-crisis recovery marketing strategy.

Owning the competition

As the market begins to display signs of recovery with increasing traveler demand, it goes without saying that competition between hotels will be fierce as they vie for prime position in online destination search results.

DerbySoft highlights how essential it is for properties to push themselves to the top of that list, and become as visible as possible to potential clientele.

With this in mind, Destination Ads can be a powerful method of bringing a property to the top of the destination search results list, and rank ahead of the competition.

A smarter way to gain exposure

While traditional metasearch ads are helpful in capturing attention, they typically belong in the lower part of the travel purchase funnel, where most users search by the hotel or brand name (followed by the evaluation, comparison, and final choice phase of the booking option).

Destination Ads are a much better way to gain attention in the current climate because they sit in the upper-middle of the travel purchase funnel: when a user is looking specifically for a place to stay in a precise city or region, but likely hasn’t made a decision on where to stay yet.

Targeting the lower and mid-upper funnel is the winning game for any hotel’s post-Covid marketing campaign. DerbySoft makes it easy for the hoteliers to cover these aspects of the funnel with the Click platform, where metasearch and Destination Ad campaigns can run at the same time, feeding each other with intelligence.

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In this guide:

  • How Destination Ads work, and what their differences are from metasearch ads and display ads
  • What kind of Destination Ads are available today, and where can you advertise your property; and
  • Recommendations on when and how to use Destination Ads

As Covid-19 continues to change the travel world, re-thinking and re-tailoring protocols is crucial, especially within the hotel marketing mix.

Destination Ads provide a crucial ‘foot in the door’: a post-pandemic necessity to help wrest attention in the ‘new normal’ – a savvy tool in any hotel’s recovery toolbox.

This content was created collaboratively by DerbySoft and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.

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Tags: Derbysoft, destinations, digital advertising, SkiftX Showcase: Destinations

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