Expedia Media Solutions Announces 2012 Partner Award Recipients in Global Markets

BELLEVUE, Wash., May 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Expedia® Media Solutions, the advertising sales division of global online travel leader Expedia, Inc., today announced the recipients of its 2012 Partner Awards for Africa, Latin America (LATAM) and the Middle East. The Partner Awards are presented to original and groundbreaking campaigns as a nod to the exemplary innovation and success in digital marketing and advertising. 

Expedia Media Solutions consults with partners to develop campaigns that effectively leverage the Expedia platform and its robust network. By tapping into Expedia Media Solutions' expertise and global reach, marketers can create comprehensive campaigns that use innovative co-branding tactics and drive powerful results like those demonstrated by the 2012 winners.

"Our consultative approach allows us to collaborate with partners at inception to develop impactful campaigns that maximize performance and map back to their business objectives," said Noah Tratt, global vice president, Expedia Media Solutions. "The partnerships recognized in these regions leveraged industry or marketplace trends and utilized cutting-edge marketing strategies to deliver quantifiable results."

Presented at leading trade shows around the world, this year's winners include:

LATAM 2012 Campaign of the Year: Mexico Tourism Board, presented at Tianguis Turístico México
Mexico Tourism Board (MTB) was looking to increase its market share and alter public perception by highlighting its diverse activities and experiences so that it could ultimately drive consideration of Mexico as a travel destination. Expedia Media Solutions worked with MTB to develop a fully integrated, cross-channel campaign that delivered an immersive consumer experience, including expandable ad units, multiple display placements across Expedia, Home Page and Destination Store takeovers, and innovative social content. During Cinco de Mayo, Expedia rebranded its Facebook page as "Cinco de Expedia" and featured exclusive deals and discounts, trip giveaways and posts with key messages about Mexico as a travel destination, all of which provided an organic opportunity for Mexico to grow its social presence and following. The unique cross-channel integration drove real results for MTB during the campaign: year-over-year room nights and air tickets sold grew by nearly 20 percent, and overall passengers to Mexico increased by over 21 percent. On social media, the "Cinco de Expedia" promotion generated more than four million Facebook impressions and 5.6 million Twitter impressions. The campaign's social media efforts, combined with other on-site promotions and merchandising, lifted year-over-year room night growth by 57 percent.

Middle East & Indian Ocean 2012 Campaign of the Year: The Address Hotels + Resorts, presented at Arabian Travel Market
The Address wanted to boost sales and gain share over the competitive set for luxury five-star hotels in Dubai so it partnered with Expedia Media Solutions to launch a targeted brand campaign. Hosted on Expedia points of sale in the U.S., U.K. and India – an emerging audience for marketers – the campaign featured custom landing pages where The Address could showcase its five Dubai hotels, with a cohesive brand experience across the three markets. To ensure the landing page attracted a qualified audience, Expedia Media Solutions implemented a highly-targeted approach. Upper-funnel placements, such as Home Page and premium offers, were targeted to users searching for five-star hotels through Expedia's luxury segment, effectively reaching the potential customer during the inspiration phase. The three-month campaign delivered a nearly  7:1 return on investment and generated more than six million impressions with nearly 18,000 visitors to the dedicated pages, and the luxury targeted placements performed two times higher than the average Expedia benchmark. Compared to the competitive set of Dubai five-star hotels, The Address saw nearly a 50 percent increase in room nights and room nights sold during the campaign lifted by 27 percent.

African 2012 Campaign of the Year: South African Tourism, presented at INDABA
To create destination awareness and increase the volume of bookings, South African Tourism (SAT) partnered with Expedia Media Solutions for a global campaign that maximized Expedia, Inc.'s full product offering and worldwide reach. The Tourism Board also wanted to build on organic South Africa growth through Expedia and grow referrals from third-party sites such as National Geographic and WAYN.com.  To best meet the partner objectives, the Expedia Media Solutions team developed a multi-market campaign that combined standard display and geo-targeted placements to effectively reach consumers during the inspiration, consideration and purchase phases on Expedia and Hotels.com points of sale, including growing markets such as Expedia Brazil and India, and Hotels.com in Europe and Scandinavia. A second-time Partner Award winner, SAT attracted nearly 135,000 passengers during the campaign period (September 2012 – March 2013) and saw a return on investment of nearly 11:1.

About Expedia Media Solutions
Formed in 2007, Expedia Media Solutions is dedicated to building online and offline media partnerships for travel and non-travel brand advertisers and to enable them to leverage the unique media value of Expedia's network of leading travel brands and global points of sale. For more information, visit www.advertising.expedia.com.

About Expedia, Inc.
Expedia, Inc. is the largest online travel company in the world, with an extensive brand portfolio that includes some of the world's leading online travel brands, including:

• Expedia.com®, the world's largest full service online travel agency, with localized sites in 30 countries
• Hotels.com®, the hotel specialist with sites in more than 60 countries
• Hotwire®, a leading discount travel site that offers opaque deals in 11 countries on its 10 sites in North America, Europe and Asia
• Egencia®, the world's fifth largest corporate travel management company
• eLong™, the second largest online travel company in China 
• Venere.com™, the online hotel reservation specialist in Europe
• trivago®, a leading online hotel search company with sites in 33 countries
• Expedia Local Expert®,  a provider of in-market concierge services, activities and experiences in 18 markets worldwide
• Classic Vacations®, a top luxury travel specialist
• Expedia® CruiseShipCenters®, one of North America's leading retail cruise vacation experts

The company delivers consumers value in leisure and business travel, drives incremental demand and direct bookings to travel suppliers, and provides advertisers the opportunity to reach a highly valuable audience of in-market travel consumers through Expedia Media Solutions. Expedia also powers bookings for some of the world's leading airlines and hotels, top consumer brands, high traffic websites, and thousands of active affiliates through Expedia® Affiliate Network.  (NASDAQ: EXPE)  For corporate and industry news and views, visit us at www.expediainc.com or follow us on Twitter @expediainc.

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