Meet Suta Wirawan from InterContinental Bali Resort
InterContinental Bali Resort is a luxury 5-star resort in Bali, Indonesia. It is one of the most renowned beachfront resorts in Jimbaran Bay, boasting its facilities, beautiful seashore and sunset views.
Suta Wirawan, Head of Digital Marketing at Intercontinental Bali Resort Jimbaran, shares the success story of their resort:
So what was your challenge with the Russian-speaking market?
First of all, we didn’t know how to reach Russian-speaking tourists more effectively. We had a certain flow of Russian tourists every year, and we knew this market could be our point of growth. Therefore, we wanted to grow our bookings from Russia, the CIS countries, and Eastern Europe.
What was your plan to attract more visitors?
We used OTA (online travel agencies) and agency partners to boost sales on the Russian market, but their bookings were commissionable, which reduces the net price. We needed another solution.
So we started focusing on our own marketing channels and distribution. We knew that localization is important, so we included the Russian language on our website, to drive more direct bookings. When it came to advertising, we decided to try Yandex Direct.
And how was your experience with Yandex Direct?
I adapted to the Direct platform very quickly, it was easy to start and navigate our first ad campaign. We picked from the variety of formats — and used Yandex Direct’s search and display ads to reach more Russian-speaking travelers. And they are now part of our Always On campaign. Yandex support was very helpful with account setup, keywords and tags implementation, campaign analysis and optimization. We also had plenty of instructions and ad campaign guides at our disposal.
After the initial campaign setup, we decided on a trial period of 2 months to see the first result and insights. Our first experience was already a success: we saw an immediate increase in website traffic, but had to wait more for the conversions.
And the results?
The objective of the search ads was to generate traffic, while the display ads we used mainly for brand awareness.
In 6 months, we witnessed +130% traffic increase and +89% reach increase. We got nearly 20,000,000 impressions and around 15,000 CTA clicks from both search and display ads. Overall, it was a massive breakthrough in traffic and reach for us.
We are already satisfied with these results, and we’re curious in what ways we can grow with Yandex Direct in the future.
