With over 30% of bookings coming via direct channels each month, the development of streamlined, industry leading booking platform was key to Federal Groups success across its various tourism related offerings. Direct connectivity with the Opera Property Management platform was key to providing rate parity with other offers and maximising conversions through the more profitable direct channel.
The ecommerce platform needed to integrate seamlessly with a number of Federal properties, and provide a means of enticing longer stays, across a broader range of Federal properties, as well as upselling customers to the Experience offerings also developed by Federal.
Working in conjunction with Technical Services Group (TSG), Federal’s in house technical team, Deepend developed highly detailed API’s to integrate directly with the Opera Platform, and display real time rates and availability in a highly user-friendly interface.
The project focussed on allowing Federal Marketing staff to be very agile in terms of creating and deploying marketing initiatives to increase yield, including pre-packaged itineraries, multi-property packages and suggestive upselling during the checkout process.
The project also allowed for the combination of both Federal owned and operated products along with third party owned Experience products. This provided a seamless experience for the user, in terms of being able to plan their all-encompassing Tasmanian holiday from one portal.
The resulting platform resulted in conversion rates of over 14%, a phenomenal rate for an online travel booking platform. Pre-packaging of elements has also seen a marked increase in multi property and experience bookings, key to further developing Federal’s broader experience and accommodation offering.
