Reclaiming the staycation

The Challenge

St Austell were reliant on online-travel-agents (OTAs) to drive room bookings to their pub accommodation in the South West. Whilst this was effective at increasing bookings, it comes at a price: high commission fees and a missed opportunity to build direct relationships with customers.

The customer experience up to the point of booking had been very transactional, with little autonomy to inspire, persuade and drive bookings directly. 

There was a clear gap where they weren’t able to communicate the right message on the right digital channel throughout the purchase journey. They wanted a strategy that enabled the brand to create and nurture their own relationships with potential customers. 

The Solution

The strategy combined paid search, paid social advertising, and SEO to ensure that St Austell was present across the digital channels that holidaymakers use as they research, plan, and book a holiday in the South West.  

This combined strategy firstly reduced the dependency on OTAs, but also allowed St Austell to take ownership of their customer relationships over the longer term and communicate their brand and unique venue offerings on their own terms. 

We optimised and drove traffic to each venue’s individual website rather than St Austell’s main website to build up their digital ecosystem and gain more visibility in the search results, which in turn provided better long-term value. 

For organic search, rather than targeting generic terms such as ‘hotels in Cornwall’ that are incredibly competitive, we optimised towards localised terms based on the attributes of each venue, such as ‘sea view rooms in St Ives’ and ‘dog-friendly hotels in Padstow’. 

Based on the target audience being retired couples who like to get outdoors, we created new content around things to do in the local area for each venue, to win new featured snippets.  This gave the venues an edge over OTAs as they were much more visible during the search phase of the journey.