Discovery 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.

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.