How a European Tourism Leader Earned a 200% Return on Investment in Social Media
Facing stiff competition, Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs Group transformed its social networks into acquisition and loyalty channels
A longtime player in a fiercely competitive tourism sector, Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs Group has found itself fighting to retain and grow market share in recent years in the face of new online forces such as Booking.com, Tripadvisor, and Airbnb. To take on its digitally savvy competitors, the Group set its sights on rethinking its social commercial and communications strategy—starting with its social media channels.
- 150%
-
increase in website traffic
from social media - 62 000
-
new leads generated from social media
- 200% ROI
-
€3 earned in last-click sales on social media for every €1 invested
With a reputation for delivering unique and memorable vacation experiences, Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs Group had already attracted a loyal community of highly engaged fans on social media. To build on the value of these relationships, the Group set out to design a strategy that would help it build a more nuanced understanding of customers at each stage of their journey—leading to new insight and opportunities to engage more effectively with customers before, during, and after their stay.
Photo credit : @vanessavvk
How they did it
Uniting social and CRM for a deeper understanding of the customer journey
To integrate the Group’s social media strategy into its overall business and develop its strength as an acquisition and loyalty channel, it decided to unite the social media team with the CRM division under the sales department. By sharing tools and data between social and CRM, the Group enabled both groups to gain greater visibility into customer touchpoints across their journey—and create new commercial opportunities.
Identifying valuable new opportunities with social listening
To develop a deeper understanding of its customers and their activity on social media, the social team implemented a monitoring strategy that enabled it to analyze activity across social networks in real-time. Through social listening, the team was able to find, connect with, and recruit potential brand ambassadors, and also to quickly and easily identify user-generated content that the team could integrate into the brand’s owned channels to generate additional traffic and leads.
Tapping into the power of storytelling with brand ambassadors
To bring more authentic storytelling to its brand, Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs Group decided to create a community of ambassadors—and to build that community, it needed to look no further than its own customers. Beyond engaging storytelling, the Group’s aim was to curate a growing body of content created by ambassadors, which could then be reused strategically at different stages throughout the customer journey as part of a user-generated content (UGC) strategy.
Building a more resilient business with effective crisis communications
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs Group had to immediately evacuate customers from its properties and cancel all reservations, issuing refunds in the form of credit notes. Thanks to its rapid response and effective customer care, the Group was able to weather a crisis without damage to its strong brand and reputation for service.
Hootsuite is a real partner for us. Their teams have supported us very well from the beginning of the project. Always right by our side, they offer us a proactive follow-up of our activity, even giving us the opportunity to test new features in order to best serve our goals.
The results
In the space of 12 months, Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs Group transformed social media into a true acquisition channel. Bolstered by continuous success, Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs Group continues to evolve its social media strategy and look ahead in its partnership with Hootsuite.
