DanWest is a letting agency for holiday home owners. They exclusively offer holiday homes on the Jutland west coast, with over 500 properties available to rent all year round. WeMarket was brought in when DanWest wanted to attract even more holiday home owners to use their letting services. However, due to the coronavirus, we had to change strategy – and fast!
The vast majority of DanWest’s bookings come from German customers. That’s why alarm bells rang when the border between Denmark and Germany was closed as a result of the coronavirus in March 2020.
From one day to the next, DanWest faced a serious risk of losing all incoming bookings and therefore most of their high season revenue. DanWest’s marketing setup was geared towards the German market with German partners, and was not prepared to handle the Danish market.
At the same time, there were challenges in the political landscape, as the Danish Prime Minister advised people to stay at home and avoid holiday home stays.
Through our collaboration, we identified that the market for holiday home rentals in Denmark could heat up for two key reasons – despite political challenges:
1: Danes were required to stay home and spend their summer holiday locally
2: Options for a summer holiday in Denmark were limited to day trips, camping – or, crucially, holiday home stays.
Together with DanWest, we developed a strategy for how we could shift focus from attracting more property owners and letting via Germany to renting holiday homes to Danes.
Our recommendation was to reallocate the budget from efforts in Germany to two channels in Denmark:
Google & Facebook
We reviewed their existing Google Ads account and found a wealth of opportunities for improvement. Combined with an expectation of strong demand for holiday homes in the Danish market, we saw major potential. Anticipating an extremely active Danish market, we also recommended broad market advertising on Facebook.
We were confident that we could inspire potential customers to book a holiday home through DanWest. Our plan became clear: more Google campaigns to capture increased demand, combined with broad Facebook advertising to capitalise on wide appeal.
In addition to strong results over Easter, Great Prayer Day, Ascension Day and Whitsun holidays, DanWest could already report fully booked holiday homes for the high season by week 23. From 1 March 2020 – 30 June 2020, their Danish website generated a more than sixfold increase in revenue.
In addition, bookings by phone and email (outside the website) should be counted as an indirect effect of the marketing efforts.
All in all: An agile partnership that ensured a Danish company navigated safely through the Corona crisis.
Visit DanWest and see their charming holiday homes here.
As you can see from the Google Trends graph above, we were right:
Demand for holiday homes more than doubled compared to 2019.
Orders through the website
Visitors on the website
It took selling out during the peak season
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