Data-driven resilience: How The Empire Hotel defied market trends with Acquisition Studio
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Acquisition Studio provides solutions for hoteliers to grow their marketing across distribution channels. Exceed guest expectations with Hospitality Solutions’ expertise in digital marketing for hotels, global distribution system (GDS) marketing solutions, and agreements with the world’s top corporate travel bookers.
Located in the heart of New York City, The Empire Hotel is a premium, boutique property known for its iconic branding and sophisticated service. To maintain its competitive edge in one of the world’s busiest cities, the hotel utilized Acquisition Studio to generate direct bookings, increase market share, and attract new potential guests. This approach included Metasearch for direct bookings, Google’s Performance Max for Travel Goals (PMTG), GDS Media for travel agent visibility, and Consortia Services for elite corporate partnerships.
The objective: Achieving performance stability in a softening market
The New York City hotel market recently faced a challenging paradox. Despite high city-wide occupancy, the region suffered from a downgraded tourism forecast driven by a sharp decline in international visitors. This created significant headwinds for premium properties.
The Empire Hotel faced a critical objective: protect revenue and maintain performance in a market that was fundamentally softening from the top down. They needed a strategy that would not just maintain the status quo, but drive growth despite the decline in their traditional international customer base.
The solution: A multi-channel strategy
Instead of pulling back on spend during the downturn, The Empire Hotel and the Acquisition Studio team committed to a proactive, four-pronged strategy designed to engage the entire travel ecosystem, from individual leisure travelers to elite travel networks.
- Capturing Direct Bookers (Metasearch Ads): We implemented a consistent, well-funded Metasearch ad presence to ensure the hotel’s official website remained visible to travelers with high booking intent, effectively capturing lucrative direct revenue.
- Finding New Audiences with AI (Performance Max): We enabled Google’s Performance Max for Travel Goals (PMTG), a strategic AI-enabled ad campaign designed totarget potential guests throughout their entire booking journey across 7 different platforms of Google. By utilizing this AI driven tool, the team identified and converted a new domestic “bleisure” (business + leisure) traveler segments, strategically replacing the volume lost from the international market.
- Activating the Broad Travel Trade (GDS Media): To boost visibility among travel agents, we launched a targeted Sabre PromoSpots campaign. This put the hotel in front of over 5,800 travel agencies, enhanced by an ongoing “Sponsored Property” campaign to secure premium placement.
- Forging Elite Travel Partnerships (Consortia): To penetrate the most lucrative travel segments, the hotel enrolled in a deluxe Consortia Services package. This elevated the hotel’s profile within elite corporate and leisure agency networks, unlocking high value growth opportunities.
The results
The “smart strategy” approach delivered outstanding, measurable growth across all targeted areas, proving that strategic investment can defy market trends. Despite the headwinds in NYC, the hotel achieved:
- 41% Increase in Revenue (Q1 to Q3 Year Over Year)
- 12% Increase in Bookings (Q1 to Q3 Year Over Year)
- 62:1 ROI on GDS Media (Over 6 months)
- 16:1 ROI on Consortia (Over 8 months)
The Empire Hotel aims to sustain this trajectory by relying on the dependability of these solutions. As the hotel management noted, the consistency of the partnership allows them to focus on the “bigger picture” of brand growth and market positioning, knowing their digital campaigns will perform without interruption even in a volatile market.
