Advocacy Archives - Flip.to Blog

Marketing reimagined—how Intracoastal Vacation Rentals is growing a right-fit audience and driving direct revenue

For any travel brand, finding a right-fit audience to inspire with the right message at the right time can be costly. That’s because dominant players often consume the travel industry’s profits, and many accommodation providers have the odds stacked against them.

That’s why reaching and inspiring travelers in the dreaming phase is a critical marketing goal—where you can tap a right-fit audience before their competitors even have a chance.

In North Carolina, Intracoastal Vacation Rentals‘ Business Development Director, Trisha Howarth, speaks to the hurdles—

“The biggest challenge of professional rental agencies is growing brand awareness and retention of the renter. We want to keep renters booking directly with the agency versus other online platforms.”

IVR has 180 rentals spread along the beach islands between Bald Head Island and Wrightsville Beach. Last year, Trisha’s vacation rental group joined NorthCarolinaBound—a collaborative of accommodation providers across the state aimed at driving direct revenue for the travel industry—to reach more travelers at the lowest cost possible.

Advocacy in the dreaming phase

“Building a clientele that continues to come back and rent through the agency year after year is really important. We’ve found a good way to do that is to grow our audience through Flip.to’s Advocacy platform.”

Through Advocacy, past guests introduce vacation rental groups to friends and family—a like-minded audience of similar demographics. With each passing guest, their properties are continually introduced to more travelers, swelling their audiences.

From there, the platform reaches the traveler at their point of inspiration in a one-to-one conversation that’s nurtured to fill the marketing funnel and help warm leads convert.

Discovery in the planning phase

The second part of the platform reaches travelers in a completely different traveler phase. Discovery sparks conversations with planners who land on IVR’s site, ready to book a trip.

The platform unveils these planners, learns about their intent and shopping window, and re-engages the planner along the decision-making journey to win them over.

“Discovery is helpful because it shows what resonates with our audience—what they’re searching for and how to engage them with the right message. It’s really going to help us with conversion.”

Visit North Carolina’s contribution

For a boutique agency like IVR, NorthCarolinaBound—sponsored by Visit North Carolina—is making a difference.

“VisitNC and the NorthCarolinaBound partnership is building an audience for the state of North Carolina, and helping smaller agencies engage in a platform that may otherwise be unaffordable for them. It’s really a win-win—helping everyone level up.”

Maximizing VR potential

Flip.to builds product with vacation rentals in mind. From learning a traveler’s individual interests, to taking into account booking policies that guide planners on when to stay, the platform is designed to eliminate friction for a smooth and intuitive user experience.

“Flip.to is constantly working to take care of exceptions, so I find they’re really attuned to working with the vacation rental market. They’re certainly on the right track, and will continue to improve the product.”

Better marketing, bigger results

For marketers, time matters. That’s why Advocacy keeps inspiring dreamers with only minutes of time per week, while Discovery continually wins over planners with almost no input needed.
As part of NorthCarolinaBound, Trisha is filling her marketing funnel with a high-quality audience through better conversations with travelers. This more authentic approach to marketing leads to a lower cost of acquisition for her audience, and with direct bookings, to higher revenue.

If you’re ready to reach, inspire and win over travelers with an approach centered on authenticity and trust, give us a shout—we’re excited to kick off.

Authentic conversations with travelers help Kingsmill Resort drive conversion and deliver higher revenue

Authentic conversations with a right-fit audience of potential travelers are central to the marketing strategy at Kingsmill Resort, led by Julie O’Neil, Director of Marketing and Public Relations.

“In addition to growing our Membership program, a good portion of my job is to fill the resort’s marketing funnel with new and repeat guests, and build brand awareness for the property,” says Julie, whose sales and marketing career has taken her from theme park to DMO, and now to the property side. Kingsmill caters to a diverse audience, as Julie shares,

“We get a nice mix of families, couples and groups throughout the year. When attractions like Busch Gardens and Water Country USA are open for the season, we obviously see more families. Groups often immerse themselves in our on-property amenities, like our Plantation and River golf courses.

What’s best about Kingsmill is the wide open green space. We don’t have a towering main building; just low density condominiums thoughtfully dispersed throughout the community.”

Landscape orientation photo of Kingsmill Resort grounds and building in summer. The resort sits in the background with a pond and lush green grass in the foreground. — Originally developed by ubiquitous brewing company, Anheuser-Busch, the resort sits atop 2,900 sprawling acres along the placid James River in Williamsburg, Virginia. Championship golf courses, a luxurious spa, in situ restaurants, and seasonal watersports make it a destination unto itself. Though the property is also at the doorstep of Busch Gardens and Colonial Williamsburg.

The resort thrives mostly on a drive market, the radius of which has expanded since the pandemic. Regardless of the demographic she would like to reach, Flip.to helps to grow a right-fit audience for Julie daily, and sparks the right kind of conversations Kingsmill needs to help win-over travelers.

As a direct result of better conversations, the platform has generated a whopping 360x return on investment in just one year:

Advocacy in the dreaming phase

Kingsmill’s owned audience has grown as their reach continues to swell through Advocacy’s storytellers. It’s a sign that authentic marketing resonates.

“Word of mouth marketing, and stories from guests are extremely important. The Flip.to platform really helps build awareness in an authentic way,” says Julie. “The guest stories we get help connect future travelers to a moment—celebrating anniversaries, birthdays, girls’/guys’ weekends—whatever may be important to them.”

Reaching travelers at the point of inspiration is crucial to filling Julie’s funnel. Plus, Kingsmill Resort’s growing audience has been introduced by friends and family of current and past guests, making them an ideal look-alike demographic.

From there, the platform nurtures Kingsmill’s audience until they convert, contributing to direct revenue.

Discovery in the planning phase

In a different segment of the journey, Discovery sparks conversations with travelers in the planning phase. The goal is to learn more about visitors who land on the resort’s site, understand their intent, and win them over.

Discovery unveils these planners, and very accurately reveals their travel window, so they’re no longer anonymous web visitors on an unknown path. The platform re-engages along the traveler’s decision-making journey—at the right time and with the right message—to help win them over for Kingsmill.

This largely works without input from Julie, increasing conversion at the bottom of the funnel and contributing to direct revenue—all while freeing her time for more laborious tasks.

Better marketing nets bigger results

The combination of Advocacy and Discovery for Kingsmill Resort led to an incredible $2.3 million in direct revenue in 2022, which proves that a funnel filled with a qualified audience, and authentic conversations around travelers’ wants, ultimately leads to bigger revenue.

That kind of victory is worthy of an ice-cold beer.

If you’d like Flip.to to spark better conversations with your travelers, and increase your conversion at the same time, we’d love to hear from you.

Ignite your marketing: How The Osthoff harnessed conversations with a warm audience to spark huge return

Previously, Adam Hartenberger of The Osthoff Resort shared how Flip.to turned him from skeptic to success story. Next, we’re looking at how Adam and team paired up with partner Revinate to put insight from the platform to work for another level up.

First, let’s recap how we got here.

Discovery for The Osthoff

The Flip.to platform strikes up conversations to win over planners and ultimately increase revenue. To recap, in just ninety days, here’s what The Osthoff tallied. 📈

The Osthoff is growing a massive, highly qualified audience. From there, The Osthoff aimed to increase the value of that audience—tapping Revinate and their Reservation Sales solution to do just that.

Pairing up with reservation sales

As the summer months approached, Adam identified a need period that he aimed to give a boost. With Discovery, he was able to identify a warm audience whose intent matched that need. From there, Adam worked with Revinate to set this audience on a longer-tail nurturing journey that ultimately delivered through to their sales call center.

The result? A home run. In fact, Adam’s campaign was so successful, The Osthoff’s call center asked him to hit pause.

“We started our nurtures in mid-July, and we had a summer campaign all built out, ready to go. We turned it on, and the reservations manager called. She said, ‘I don’t know what you guys are doing, but turn it off.’ Because all of a sudden, we’re having 1,500 conversations a week with people who are legitimately qualified, and they’re calling back!”

That’s when Adam realized he was really on to something. They dialed back their approach for that summer season, and instead, used the nurtures to feed a record fall.

“We start off with a welcome message—’Thank you for looking at us.’ We include some great imagery from the season they’re looking to stay. Then we explain why it’s good to stay at our property during that time….

I’m talking about hiking, rejuvenating in the spa, golf, etcetera.”

If you’re a planner, a message like this helps you pick up right where you left off with the Osthoff.

Sparking other creative approaches

Adam and the marketing team at the Osthoff aren’t settling there. They’re already looking ahead to continue amplifying impact—the exact kind of creativity that really moves the needle.

“As we come into a year of [Discovery], our next strategy is to remarket—because we know what your shopping window was last year. Let’s just replicate that. Let’s get two weeks ahead of that this year, and get in front of you at the proper time.”

Injecting hospitality into digital marketing

Too often, hotel marketing tends to be about the needs of the property, and not the wants and travel intent of the audience. Instead, Adam’s team is precisely on the right track, learning from the insights of their travelers to have conversations with planners about the things they were interested in.

The highly qualified audience Discovery is delivering makes those conversations especially potent, and ultimately leads to better conversion. Adam’s extraordinary results are proof positive.

If you missed the first part of The Osthoff story, read why marketing your hotel is far more than selling a room.

Discovery was built to spark better conversations with travelers. And better marketing ultimately nets better results—all the way to revenue

If you’re ready to reach, inspire and win over travelers with an approach centered on authenticity and trust, give us a shout—we’re excited to kick off.

How Visit NC is supercharging one resort’s marketing, while lifting the entire community to a more profitable future

In the heart of North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad, Christina York is the Director of Sales and Marketing for the 244-room Grandover Resort & Spa. She leads a small, but mighty team on the sales side, and an even smaller team on the marketing side.

Deployed as part of the first-of-its-kind NorthCarolinaBound collaborative, Flip.to’s out-of-the-box platform is built with hoteliers like Christina in mind. We do all the heavy lifting, so properties like Grandover get started with a copy-&-paste, and spend only a few minutes per week—yet net incredible impact.

Here’s what that looks like for Christina.

The results

The Flip.to platform is moving the needle for Grandover Resort & Spa with a minimal investment of time spent behind the scenes.

Sponsored by Visit North Carolina, lodging partners across the state are joining the NorthCarolinaBound collaborative at no cost to them. And in Greensboro, Christina is grateful to have the platform working for her.

It’s acting as an extension of her marketing efforts, introducing the resort to travelers in the inspiration and dreaming phase through Advocacy, and sparking conversations with planners in the booking phase through Discovery.

Lightweight by design

As a full-service, independent resort surrounded by 36 holes of golf, Grandover is an unexpected find in Greensboro. “It’s not the first place people think about going for a vacation,” explains Christina.

Yet, there’s a strong drive market within a six-hour radius, to which the platform has introduced over 26,000 potential travelers in the past 90 days. “These are people we would not have reached without Flip.to,” she added. “Every time I look at the dashboard, I’m like, ‘Hey, this is working. This is cool!'”

From the start of NCBound, the Flip.to team made things turnkey for Christina.

“The onboarding process was tremendous. The service from the Flip.to folks was really amazing, and they walked us through very patiently. There was lots of education and hand-holding once we were all set up and going.”

Customer Success representative, Sam Gedihovich, is a great part of Grandover’s success. She keeps an eye on the resort’s efforts, and strategizes next moves, preserving Christina’s time for other tasks.

Why NCBound?

Visit NC is making this technology possible—supercharging Christina’s marketing while she’s executing her day-to-day—and lifting the entire community to compete for a larger share of travelers.

“I have really good feelings about Visit NC, and what they’re doing. They’re proactive, and I’m always surprised by the initiatives they take. They always seem to be onto creative things.”

If you’d like to be a part of something bigger in the North Carolina community, join NCBound here.

Why marketing your hotel is far more than selling a room

“The least important thing when booking a hotel reservation is the hotel room,” says Adam Hartenberger, which sums up a bold marketing ethos. In the ever-changing world of hotel marketing, the statement guides Adam’s open-minded approach to stay ahead of the curve.

“I think where a lot of hoteliers get lost is the one thing that most hoteliers sell on—hotel rooms. And really when you think about your vacation, most people can’t explain the hotel room they stayed in. They talk about the things they went on vacation to do.”

As Assistant Director of Marketing at The Osthoff Resort, Adam focuses on the experiences his lakeside resort in Wisconsin offers. As part of that effort, he relies on Flip.to to drive those experiential conversations with future guests. In fact, his team has become one of the most creative users of the platform to date.

Sparking conversations with traveler planners

After Advocacy proved very effective in inspiring dreamers, Adam was introduced to the newest part of the platform by Flip.to’s Account Executive for Customer Success, Joseph Meuse.

Discovery is a reimagined booking path built to spark more meaningful conversations with travelers in the planning phase. Though Adam was intrigued, he admits he was a skeptic at first.

“When Joe [from Flip.to] pitched us on Discovery, he said, ‘Watch the numbers. Your conversion percentage is going to increase.’ I’m just thinking in my head, ‘Joe, there’s no way that’s going to happen. Joe, you’re asking people for their email. They’re just going to exit out. That’s not going to happen.'”

Until it did. Discovery helped the Osthoff learn about their travelers’ intent, unveil who they are, and re-engage them around their interests.

In just ninety days, here’s what The Osthoff tallied. 📈

The pursuit of audience growth

At the point The Osthoff switched on Discovery, Adam’s biggest goal to follow revenue was audience growth. He shared,

“We didn’t really—even at that point—understand what it was going to do. We didn’t realize how many people were going to our website, and how many people we could genuinely open up a conversation with.”

Once Discovery was fully live, the resort was seeing incredible audience growth.

“Going in, I honestly thought we were going to get like eight percent [of unveils]. Last time we checked it was forty-one percent!”

It’s proof that engaging planners in better conversations around their intent, and bringing the principles of hospitality into the online experience drives better results.

Other insights from Discovery

On top of driving top line revenue, Discovery is giving Adam the real-time insights of travelers on The Osthoff’s site, including when travelers are looking to book. Those signals helped Adam identify previously unrecognized seasonal demand.

“We noticed that we had way more people looking at our website for dates that weren’t summer. We really didn’t think fall was a big thing for us. But we had a record breaking fall all of the sudden, because we found that there were really a lot of people searching for those dates.”

Adam was able to focus the efforts of his marketing team based on these learnings from Discovery.

“I now have data about when people are really looking to stay with us this year. I know that 40-ish percent of people unveil. If we just use some assumptive math, we can figure out the demand on our website. From a revenue perspective, that’s huge.

From a marketing perspective, I also know when people are shopping. I know what their booking window is. I know the dates they’re shopping. Most importantly, I have their email address to give them information about their shopping journey.”

The immediate takeaway from Adam’s bold new approach is if you do a really good job speaking to the individual interests of each traveler, you’ll likely be the top choice for their place to stay.

But Adam’s story doesn’t end here. Adam and his team took nurturing the extra mile—harnessing conversations with a warm audience to spark a huge return.

Discovery was built to spark better conversations with travelers. And better marketing ultimately nets better results.

If you’re ready to reach, inspire and win over travelers with an approach that centered on authenticity and trust, give us a shout—we’re excited to kick off.

A first of its kind collaborative is off to a great start in North Carolina

How it started

Earlier this year we shared our excitement to launch NorthCarolinaBound as the first state-wide destination collaborative of its kind. Through this partnership, Visit North Carolina is leading the charge to bring massive value to regional destinations and its lodging industry.

How it’s going

Since our announcement, we’ve been working to onboard an enthusiastic group of folks from independent hotels to branded groups, vacation rentals, and even regional destinations.

From the dreaming phase to the planning phase, Flip.to is helping North Carolina’s properties spark conversations that build relationships and win over travelers.

A variety of screenshots of various guest stories and photos from Sanderling Resort guests

Sanderling Resort is winning at the Dreaming Phase.

231K friends and family reached in 90 days.

Screenshots of Grandover's Discovery stats and Discovery Planner Flow

The Grandover Resort & Spa is crushing it in the Planning Phase.

In 90 days, 3,000 planners unveiled, which led to $30K in direct revenue earned.

Photo submission from Jay M., showing a small chihuahua in the back of an SUV looking out of the open hatchback at the sunset as its owner is laying camping next to him. Jay's photo says 'My favorite North Carolina moment was watching an amazing sunset with my best friend on the Blue Ridge Parkway.'

On the statewide level, Visit North Carolina is creating impact for everyone.

385,000 friends and family reached—a new, right-fit audience—and 8,000 planners unveiled, who are considering a trip to NC.

Screenshots of the Visit NC 'Take only stories, leave only footprints' campaign invitation page

Visit North Carolina’s Take Only Stories, Leave Only Footprints campaign is currently introducing the state to a trove of enthusiasts interested in outdoor adventure, and bringing added awareness to Outdoor NC’s “Leave No Trace” principles.

Flip.to’s other partners in NorthCarolinaBound are setting up for massive impacts too, and as the groundswell builds, it’s going to be a major win for everyone in the state of North Carolina.

Working to help everyone

“It’s our mission to drive meaningful growth to the tourism industry with innovation that provides measurable impact.

NorthCarolinaBound delivers directly to our destination and lodging partners in all 100 counties while engaging with travelers in positive ways,” said Wit Tuttell, director of Visit NC.

By working together at scale, Flip.to and Visit North Carolina are leading the state to a more profitable future. We continue to add more partners, and grow a collaborative that’s stronger with each passing day.

If you’re a member of the North Carolina lodging industry or a regional destination, give us a shout. We’d love to welcome you into this unique collaborative.

Open mic: help travelers enrich their time, and they’ll be willing to give you more of it

Travel marketing is so much more than selling rooms–it’s selling time. When you help a traveler enrich their time, they’ll be willing to give you more of it.

And with deep roots in the community, independent hotels are uniquely positioned as hosts to help travelers maximize their time. And more time leads to better profitability.

That’s why Ed St. Onge and Hal Fickett from our team recently joined Trevor Stuart-Hill and Catherine Smagala of Revenue Matters as part of our open mic jam session.

Take a peek at a few top highlights from our conversation. 🎙️

Video 1: Building traveler relationships + the why

“…the reason you want to sell the experience is to ultimately sell more time.”

Elevate destination experiences with the community

To help you showcase your property’s destination and its experiences, put to work relationships with past guests, your team, local businesses, and if you have one, your destination marketing organization.

These resources can help you crowdsource the experiences that ultimately help win over new audiences of travelers.

Video 2: Elevate destination experiences with the community

“If you want to stick out amongst your competitive set, be the best source of knowing your community.”

Maximize your role as host, online and off

Once armed with the experiences around your community, use them to win over planners on your site in the consideration phase.

Showcase stories from guests not only enjoying their time at your property, but also encountering these community gems.

Video 3: Maximize your role as a host, online and off

“If you can give [the traveler] the information that they need about your destination, things to see and do…you’re setting yourself up for success.”

Have more personal, meaningful traveler conversations

Once travelers are educated and excited about your destination, it’s time to engage them in meaningful conversations on your site. These digital conversations should reflect real-life conversations that aim to be helpful.

By doing so, you’re building stronger relationships and trust among your audience—gains that ultimately help and increase direct, incremental revenue.

Video 4: Making digital journeys reflect real-life conversations

“Your website and booking engine should be as good of an experience as if they called you… We should be narrating these digital journeys as a conversation.”

Align marketing + revenue management

Collaborating on an integrated strategy where marketing, revenue management, and distribution are all aligned ultimately means we all can get better, together.

Video 5: Align your marketing and revenue management teams

“[The bottom line]—if we don’t all row in the same direction, then we’re not going to have optimal performance.”

Being a better host leads to better profitability

Selling more time leads to greater profitability. When independent hotels shepherd the story of their destination well, that leads to a highly engaged audience that costs less to acquire and opens properties up for extended stays since travelers know how to maximize their time.

Blending that with your revenue management strategy amplifies your impact even more.

Video 6: How does this lead to being more profitable?

“If you’re taking that incremental approach to having better conversations [and] information on your site, you will see… lower costs of acquisition [down to] transaction.”

To hear more from the minds at Revenue Matters, give them a follow here. And if you’re ready to reach, inspire and win over more travelers, say hello to Hal here at Flip.to—we’re ready to kick off the conversation on topping your goals!

Woodloch Resort’s Rory O’Fee teams up with Flip.to to have better conversations with travelers

Since 2015 Woodloch Resort has been a power-user of the Flip.to platform, led by Director of Marketing, Rory O’Fee. He and his team have always felt that personal stories and authentic conversations are what resonate with travelers.

Recently, Woodloch implemented Discovery, and after only a short time, O’Fee and his team have been astounded by the results.

How did they end up with such a big bump in revenue and conversion? Let’s look further.

Family First

At Woodloch Resort, everyone is family. “We’re a family business that employs families that cater to families vacationing,” explains O’Fee. With thirty plus activities scheduled daily and inclusive meal plans, it’s easy to see why families are the number one draw to the 225-key resort. The property’s shores along Lake Teedyuskung, in the picturesque Pocono Mountains, are a wonderful place to make memories.

Marketing on Authenticity + Trust

Woodloch’s homegrown property management system has evolved over time, but is still limited for O’Fee’s marketing needs. When he first heard about Discovery, he knew it was a solve for many of his pain points.

“It’s the feeling you get when you come to Woodloch that leaves a lasting impression. That’s how we bring a family aspect into our marketing. We extrapolate those stories, and let people share their best moments,” says O’Fee.

Advocacy has been supporting that strategy for some time now in the dreaming phase. But O’Fee wanted to bring those tenets into focus on the planning phase.

“The Discovery platform has given us a new set of tools that I haven’t had access to previously. And that’s looking at traveler intent and interest—their timing interest, and their lead time to booking.

And being able to craft a message to talk to them, and help guide them through the booking process at the right time. That has been a wonderful tool for me, because I get to see when people are interested and looking. Then I can really shift my strategy accordingly.”

Intent: A Crystal Ball

That’s important for Woodloch, since its activities shift from season to season, maximizing fun in each. Winter’s snow tubing and “Winter Olympics” activities give way to spring and summer’s boating on private Lake Teedyuskung, nature walks through the mountains, and outdoor concerts.

Knowing a traveler group’s season of interest and mix of ages helps Woodloch continue the conversation further. It helps to connect them with the experience that helped win them over.

The Discovery Difference: Unveil + Re-engage

With Discovery, travelers unveil far earlier in the funnel than a traditional booking path. Once a planner unveils, Woodloch tapped the platform to nurture around the experiences for their age mix, save their plans until they’re ready to book, and most importantly, re-engage at the most appropriate point in the traveler’s planning stages.

It’s no secret that understanding more about their travelers drives Woodloch’s impressive increase in conversion.

The Future: Better Marketing

Overall, Rory is seeing a strong desire for families to reconnect post-COVID. Like any marketing effort, reconnecting with and growing audiences also means navigating challenges around privacy and compliance that will continue to be important to travelers in the future, often strained by fragmented policies at varying levels.

“To be in compliance with one thing, you’re out of compliance with another. It’s very complicated.”

But he’s optimistic about working through those challenges with Flip.to and people like Customer Success Team Lead, Michael Mathews.

“I know you’re going to grow, and come up with new solutions that will enhance the travelers’ experience. In doing so, you’re going to enhance the supplier’s experience in getting people booked,” said O’Fee.

“You’re working to change an element of the travel experience, and I’m excited to be a part of that.”

If you’d like to stay in touch with Rory to hear more of his ideas on where travel marketing needs to be headed, give him a follow, here.

If you think Flip.to can help you have better conversations with your travelers, and in doing so, increase your conversion at the same time, we’d love to hear from you.

How NCBound is helping vacation rentals unlock marketing that’s built on trust

By teaming up, we believe we can drive a more profitable VR community.

That’s why Ed St. Onge and Hal Fickett from our team recently joined Paul Hanak and Diamond Frandsen of InterCoastal Net Designs (ICND) to chat reimagined marketing for vacation rentals. And thanks to the first-of-its-kind Destination Collaborative sponsored by Visit North Carolina, the VR community can put these ideas into action.

Take a peek at a few top highlights from our conversation. 🎙️

Why collaboration?

Visit North Carolina and Flip.to are teaming up on NorthCarolinaBound to deliver direct impact to lodging partners and help the whole state accelerate.

That means by joining, industry partners like vacation rentals get access to the Flip.to marketing platform thanks to a full sponsorship by the state—so there’s no out-of-pocket costs to take part.

And that’s a big win. With Flip.to, vacation rental marketers reach, inspire and win over travelers in the dreaming and planning phases to grow their direct channel in a way that’s good for everyone—travel brand and traveler alike.

Video 1: NorthCarolinaBound: Let's inspire and win over more travelers, together.

“Visit NC… have sponsored the platform for any lodging provider in the state of North Carolina to be able to use the platform for their own goals and purposes… at no cost to them.”

Reach & inspire an audience of dreamers

Travel brands start by winning over travelers in the dreaming phase, reaching and inspiring a right-fit audience with the help of past guests. Earn warm introductions to their friends and family help you reach a high-quality, right-fit demographic and build your top of funnel with warm leads.

Video 2: Flip.to for Vacation Rentals-A Snapshot of Advocacy

“When we talk about the dreaming phase, we think this is a big opportunity for the vacation rental industry to position themselves to win the hearts and minds of travelers before they’ve even decided they want to travel.“

Win over planners considering North Carolina

In the planning phase, brands spark conversations with travelers deciding where to go next to increase conversion, with the revenue impact tracked in real-time. On average, we’re seeing a double-digit increase in conversion.

Video 3: Discovery: Unveil and re-engage planners on your site

“The primary goal of Discovery is to get you into a meaningful conversation with as many people who come to your website as possible. And when you understand what they’re interested in and they tell you who they are…the second goal of Discovery is to drive more people into booking.”

Amplify other marketing efforts

When Flip.to introduced Discovery to Paul Hanak and Diamond Frandsen at ICND, they immediately understood its game-changing capabilities.

Video 4: Launch Highly Targeted Marketing Campaigns with First-Party Data from Discovery

“Being able to access first-party data from Discovery for your campaigns “will make your marketing team very happy”.“

Discovery allows partners like ICND to understand shopping windows and launch other highly-targeted marketing campaigns that are based on a traveler’s intent.

Video 5: Why Discovery Opens Up an Entirely New Paradigm on How to Market

“Discovery “opens up an entirely new paradigm on how to market. In the hands of someone who knows what to do with that, it can really change things. This is why we like partnering with ICND…they immediately understood what this would mean to them.”“

Join the hundreds of lodging partners in regions across the state already on NorthCarolinaBound. As a fully sponsored initiative backed by the NC and Flip.to teams—all of the cost and heavy lifting is done.

Start winning over travelers at a massive scale and drive increased revenue for your accommodations with Flip.to.

Changing latitudes: a lake-loving audience is the key to a strong opening for Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe | Houston

Beyond one-to-one traveler journeys, we’ve built a platform that launches hoteliers on a marketing journey, too. A journey that infuses the tenets of good hospitality from beginning to end, and that’s simple to manage, yet incredibly impactful.

When Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe | Houston opened its doors, the property brought an entirely new concept to the area. They had to build an audience, and inspire them to get “into a vacation state of mind.”

They tapped Flip.to to do just that—and when lake life called, this audience answered, to the tune of incredible impact:

So, how’d we get here? Let’s dive in. 🏊👇

Timing is everything, until it’s not

As you’d expect, mid-2020 was a challenging time to open a new resort—even for one with rock star branding and universal name appeal. But schedules are schedules, and a property sitting idle is guaranteed to earn zero returns.

On the edge of glimmering, boater-friendly Lake Conroe, the 335-room island outpost was fresh off a massive renovation and rebranding that made it unique to any other offering on or near the lake.

Changes in Latitudes

As it does, the Margaritaville brand brought a slice of boat-drink-inspired island life to the heart of land-locked Texas, where it created a new lakefront destination fit for the surrounding drive markets of Houston, Dallas, and Austin.

Caribbean-hued paint schemes and thatch-roofed palapas inspire a more southern latitude, while Jolly Mon Water Park, also tucked in a grove of swaying palm trees, kicks up a splash of fun. Of course, no Margaritaville property is complete without a signature LandShark Bar & Grill, which in Lake Conroe, is appropriately set waterside.

Flip.to leads the charge

To thwart the unfortunate debut timing, the resort needed to grow an audience ready to receive this fin-tastic new concept.

When we partnered with the lakeside property, Flip.to Customer Success standout, Joseph Meuse, quickly became an extension of their marketing team.

Joseph helped formulate a strategy to reach and inspire travelers, especially ones that would be most engaged with lake life. His input led the resort’s team to launch conversations with a new audience in an authentic way, and at the right time in their traveler journeys.

Advocacy in the dreaming phase

Joseph first helped to maximize the impact of the Advocacy platform. He and the property’s team launched a campaign around lakeside memories.

Stories began flooding in, filled with travelers’ best moments spent on or near the water—a positive connection which was now associated with a new resort.

This led the brand into conversation with these potential new guests, and created an ever-growing audience for the resort with a love of the lake. Once the property was fully open, Flip.to helped to win-over this new audience with the right messaging.

Discovery in the planning phase

Joseph then switched on the Discovery platform to win over planners visiting the resort’s website. This part of the platform starts conversations in a reimagined way, leads planners to unveil, and learns their intent.

Flip.to helps Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe | Houston re-engage these planners around that intent when they’re ready to book. That effort increased conversion at the bottom of the funnel, and together with Advocacy humming along in the dreaming phase, fueled a successful opening year for the property.

A successful partnership

The platform sparks genuine conversations around travelers’ intent, comes fully charged to grow audiences, and converts planners into guests—all with only light lift from your team, and at a much lower cost than through traditional marketing channels.