Holiday Inn at Disney World: 60% of our Web Traffic is Driven by SEO

The Holiday Inn in the Walt Disney World Resort, had a prosperous 2010, despite a struggling travel industry. The contemporary hotel uses hotel Internet marketing provider, Vizergy, for their website design and marketing. The independent website, which adds to the hotel’s already strong presence on Holiday Inn’s corporate website, is managed on Vizergy’s Web World Publishing system, a content management system that provides flexibility, instantly updated site content and extensive reporting options.

 

From May through December of 2010, the site had approximately 53,000 visitors. Of those 53,000, more than 20,000 (nearly 40%) checked rates on the site’s booking engine (number of bookings and revenue are unavailable, as visitors are routed to Holiday Inn’s corporate booking engine). The site’s new design and navigation helps with conversion rates, but the search engine optimization (SEO) is responsible for driving traffic, as the site ranks on Google and Bing/Yahoo! first page search results for 18 targeted keyword phrases. Furthermore, of the approximate 53,000 total visitors from May through December, nearly 30,000 (almost 60% of total traffic) were a direct result of SEO.

The Holiday Inn’s site showcases the property’s walking distance proximity to Downtown Disney and free shuttle services to other areas in the park. It’s heavy on Walt Disney World Resort content, including a call to action for tickets, an accommodations page, links to park information, special packages and content on weddings and meetings at the resort. The Website also focuses on Holiday Inn’s first class service, luxurious amenities and how kids eat free and links to the hotel’s reviews on TripAdvisor.

 

“Having worked with Vizergy in the past, I know the value of their website design, marketing and personal client services team,” says Doug Smith, director of leisure travel and electronic marketing at the Holiday Inn and Z Ocean Hotel South Beach, another Vizergy client. “Vizergy does everything in-house, offering all the digital marketing services we need in one spot, eliminating the need to have multiple vendors. Being able to quickly update our websites on their Web World Publishing system is an added bonus.”