El Alameda, Palm Springs

The Challenge

The internationally-renowned celebrity owner (actor, director, writer, producer) of an historic property in Palm Springs engaged Vacaygency to revamp their short-term rental brand, build a new marketing program, and fill their empty calendar with bookings.

El Alameda is a true landmark, once owned by celebrated crooner and Hollywood legend Bing Crosby, and playground of the rich and famous for nearly one hundred years. The expansive three-casita, four bedroom home with heated pool was built in 1934 in the city’s Movie Colony neighborhood, the Palm Springs magnet for Tinseltown’s elite who were seeking complete respite and relaxation. The current owner refurbished and revitalized the hacienda with a total commitment to the original 1930s aesthetic. It features vintage art, rugs, and furnishings that are both comfortable and authentic. The hardware, décor, the vibe…all of it is period, and beautiful.

While the home offered the luxurious appointments discerning travelers seek, and is in a prime location in a hugely popular year-round vacation destination, bookings disappeared Previous attempts to increase bookings with ad hoc reduced nightly rates had not achieved the goals for either property.

Our Evaluation

Vacaygency researched the Palm Springs rental market and found that bookings were lagging for four core reasons: the Covid travel bubble had burst; significant new competition had entered the market; vacationer fee fatigue had set in and travelers were rebelling against the costs associated with OTA bookings; and the current marketing consisted of an Airbnb listing – and nothing more – and that listing wasn’t on par with the home and its 1930s Hollywood aesthetic.

Our Solution

* Vacaygency set the stage to connect with El Alameda’s guest audiences. We wrote an engaging, beautifully detailed story for the listing description that blended Hollywood, history, and the lifestyle experience at the home

* A digital advertising plan was researched and developed to generate bookings in audiences outside of the OTAs. Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and display advertising was launched on Google, Microsoft / Bing, and social media with multivariant testing enabled in every campaign to maximize optimizations and ROI

* We sourced and added beautiful lifestyle stock photos of Palm Springs and the surrounding area plus entertainment venues to showcase a holistic experience and build emotional connection

* The Hostaway PMS software package was selected as the management software package that best met the needs of the property manager, and we launched the platform for the Client and transitioned the existing Airbnb listing to it

* Inaugural listings were created on VRBO, Booking.com, and Google Vacation Rental platforms, and incorporated into Hostaway

* Facebook and Google Business pages were created to expand social media presence beyond the preexisting Instagram page

* A social media strategy was crafted that included content creation and management for multiple weekly postings, promotional posting across national and international social media travel groups, and liking / following pages of entities that elevated the El Alameda lifestyle and sharing their content on the appropriate social feeds

Results

* In just the first two months following the launch of the Vacaygency’s marketing plan elements, nights booked grew from 0% to 88%.

* Search and display ads on Google and Bing drove hundreds of clicks each month, with click-through rates (CTR) at the top end of industry standards, and cost-per-click well below $1. Media budgets were 1/6 of the spend recommended by the platforms.

* Social media advertising drove 10k property views each month and more than 500 click-throughs to the listings, at a CPC below $0.30. Social channel ads were so popular they garnered hundreds of “likes” and “shares” from audience members.

* Social media posting and on-page viewership averaged 30,000 unique visitors per month, with hundreds of content interactions.

* Activity on the OTAs generated by external marketing efforts had significant impact on the “popularity” aspects of the OTA algorithms, resulting in the OTAs presenting the property higher in searches conducted by users of their platforms.