How Aramark Destinations is maximizing revenue opportunities

The brand

Aramark Destinations, a division of Aramark, delivers authentic, memorable experiences at national and state parks, specialty hotels, museums, and other destinations across the US. In partnership with its clients, Aramark Destinations strives to enhance the guest experience by offering industry-leading hospitality, environmental stewardship, interpretive programs, and recreation.

The challenge

Covid-19 helped create demand for outdoor adventure and national park visits, but it also increased the competitive landscape. Today, with international borders open and more choices for travel destinations, it has never been more important for Aramark Destinations to stand out from the competition, tell each hotel’s unique story, and build an audience of loyal guests.

The solution

Aramark Destinations has been a Revinate customer since 2015. A couple of years ago, driven by its desire to consolidate point solutions, the brand replaced its CRM with Revinate Marketing. The marketing team was excited by the promise of having a single view of guest data and the ability to easily segment and market to guests.

During implementation, Revinate integrated the Guest Data Platform with the brand’s many PMS systems and ingested data from the previous CRM. Using its proprietary data cleansing process, Revinate removed record duplicates to ensure the data was clean and trustworthy.

“We work with numerous partners and marketing agencies for our marketing campaigns, so it is imperative to have our guest data in an accurate and central database,” says Lisa Cesaro, Senior Director of Marketing. “In addition to being able to launch campaigns faster and easier, it’s great to have one place to look for reporting and to see how we’re doing month over month and year over year.”

With the data in one central system, the marketing team was able to get creative with segmentation. One particularly successful campaign used a “limited time” subject line, “Last chance for rare dates at iconic Yosemite properties,” and Revinate’s geolocation feature to isolate prospective guests in the drive-to market for a Yosemite National Park portfolio hotel. The email achieved a 45% open rate and a 5% CTR.

Another successful campaign targeted upcoming guests with a specific room type and offered an upgrade for 50% off. The subject line, “Upgrade your houseboat @ 50% OFF,” drove a record-breaking 74% open rate and a 38% CTR.

Automation features in Revinate have also allowed Aramark Destinations to easily engage the right audience with the right message at the right time. The group has developed automated pre-arrival emails for each property, which are sent 10 and 30 days from check-in, to provide property information and pre-trip planning advice. This is especially helpful for guests of the state and national park properties.

Recognizing that there are many prospective guests that might not yet know about the brand, Aramark Destinations uses a digital channel-focused lead nurture strategy to engage prospective guests, targeting look-alike audiences on Facebook with special offers via email. A fall special email drove a 42% open rate and a 7% CTR.

The results

Revinate has become a core tool in the Aramark Destinations marketing team’s arsenal because it drives results. The sky-high open and CTRs lead to revenue. On average, Aramark Destinations drives $136k per campaign.

As a result, Revinate has transformed how the team thinks about capturing and using guest data. In fact, after seeing the success of segmentation on campaigns, the marketing team made a concerted effort to capture guest data, launching a website sign-up campaign to increase the size of the database and the richness of guest data.

“We’ve had great success with Revinate and are excited to continue engaging our guests with targeted content and promotions based on their profiles and preferences,” Cesaro adds.