Brand / Design / Website / Digital Marketing
White Lodging has been one of the fastest-growing hotel ownership, development and management companies in America since its inception in 1985. Wallop provides expertise for unique and high-end destinations in their broad portfolio of hotel properties.
We have a longstanding and growing relationship with White Lodging that spans multiple projects and marketing programs. We provide expertise for luxury and unique hospitality products in its North American portfolio.
We are well suited for partnerships with mid to large hospitality organizations to solve technical and marketing challenges, working alongside the leadership and marketing teams to collaborate on strategy and execution. White Lodging has been a great fit for Wallop in this regard, and we’re able to provide valuable expertise for the right property types.
There have been a number of challenges we’ve tackled through various disciplines for White Lodging. Some of the notable ones: steering the parent company towards a recruitment focus, building a custom technology framework for multiple properties, and a digital marketing program for a one-of-a-kind luxury travel destination.
Recruitment pivot – Due to the pace of its growth and acquisitions, White Lodging brand has an insatiable need for talent. While they were working through traditional channels to fill this need, they realized the main doorway for applicants was the website, and it did a very poor job of accommodating this audience; particularly Millennials from coveted hospitality programs. It needed a digital strategy from the ground up to attract the right audience.
Scalable platform – White Lodging needed a number of scalable website platforms that could accommodate multiple properties and restaurants with distinct branding, content, and third-party tools. We also needed to address regulatory compliance and security.
Digital marketing – The digital marketing and advertising for a collection of White Lodging’s most unique high-end travel destinations was performing poorly. It needed a top-down rebuild and new strategic outlook.
Recruitment pivot – First we shifted the messaging and focus from investors and developers to job candidates and students. A big portion of this audience is Millennials, so we designed a video-heavy design that positioned the company as a diverse and innovative employer that provided real opportunities for talented folks. Our solution integrates third-party HR platforms, and was layered with the usual digital marketing foundation that included tracking, analytics, and SEO to grow the audience and position the company as a top destination for those pursuing a hospitality career.
Scalable platform – This was a challenge we’ve solved many times. We built the solution on our proprietary Boilerplate development platform, which allowed us to build quickly and scale the websites for multiple properties. The custom framework accommodated multiple brands and individual digital marketing programs. As a result, we were able to deploy quickly and keep the costs much lower than building individually through a traditional workflow.
Digital marketing – This marketing project was very much in our wheelhouse, as we’ve designed and managed similar programs for one-of-a-kind travel products. We came into this engagement with a mandate to fix what wasn’t working and optimize the performance for existing ad campaigns.
While we incorporated a strong SEO strategy to the mix, our main focus was to improve the performance of the paid advertising. Following an audit and a rebuild of all accounts, we were able to deliver strong results right out of the gate. We continue to work with the marketing team through a monthly retainer, which has consistently reduced ad spend and CPA, while increasing traffic and conversions.
