RIU Hotels & Resorts, Gold Google Marketing Partners Award Winner; RIU and its partner Making Science won this award thanks to a new artificial intelligence-based digital strategy

Palma de Mallorca - RIU Hotels & Resorts, along with its partner Making Science, won a Gold Google Marketing Partners Award (GMPA) in 'Digital Transformation'.

Technological advancements and artificial intelligence (AI) have formed part of companies' day to day for years, providing them with increasingly effective marketing tools to get the right message to the right user at the right time.

The GMPAs recognise the industry's most innovative and high-tech projects developed using Google tools. This year, Boston Consulting Group worked on the GMPAs.

RIU and Making Science received a Gold award with a project in the Digital Transformation category called 'Reaching the right user; RIU's strategy to attract high-value customers by harnessing first-party data with AI'.

The RIU hotel chain was looking to enhance its campaigns to capture customers by aiming them at higher-value and profitability customers, improving user experience without lowering the number of conversions into bookings. In partnership with Making Science, the two companies transformed the digital strategy to optimise their first-party data into business data. RIU transformed its digital strategy in three fundamental steps.

Structure first-party data: The first step was to structure first-party data on Google Cloud to create a customer data platform (CDP) architecture adapted to its needs and structure.

As Juan Campins, VP of Digital Channels at Riu Hotels & Resorts explained, 'What we were looking to do was gather all customer experience data into a single environment: one that was secure, scalable and connected that would allow us to orchestrate our audiences in real time on first-party channels like the payment channel.'

Coordinate teams: Define the joint goals between the IT and Digital Channels teams using first-party data as the basis for strategy transformation.

In the words of Alvaro Verdeja, global director of data and the cloud at Making Science, 'each team working with first-party data provided their data sources: digital marketing platforms, contact centre platforms, the booking engine, etc.' That established the way everyone would work together to achieve the business objectives. 'After that, we were able to analyse user profiles to offer them a unique experience prior to reaching the website, while using it and after', Verdeja explained.

Activate first-party data thanks to AI: With Making Science, the Direct Sales and Digital Channels teams launched a variety of proprietary technological solutions based on AI models, which our partner grouped under the name Gauss.

Working with Gauss AI solutions leveraging their first-party data allowed RIU to increase bookings by 99% and double its ROAS (return on ad spend).

ABOUT RIU HOTELS & RESORTS

The international RIU chain was founded in Mallorca by the Riu family in 1953 as a small holiday firm and is still owned by the family's third generation. The company specialises in holiday resorts and over 70% of its establishments offer its acclaimed All Inclusive by RIU service. With the inauguration of its first city hotel in 2010, RIU is expanding its range of products with its own line of city hotels called Riu Plaza. RIU Hotels & Resorts now has 100 hotels in 20 countries. In 2020, the chain welcomed 2,3 million guests and provided jobs for a total of 24,425 employees. RIU is currently the world's 32nd ranked chain, one of the Caribbean's most popular, the third largest in Spain in terms of revenue and the fourth largest in number of rooms.

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