Background

Princess Lodges (a division of Holland America-Princess) has been a Portent client since 2002. They are a major force in travel and tourism, offering well-appointed, quality lodging in Alaska, as well as rail tours of the state’s most beautiful topography and wildlife.

Results at a Glance

Princess Lodges Traffic Improvement
  • Revenue from blog landing pages increased almost 400% while transactions doubled
  • Blog traffic increased 124% year-over-year
  • Social referral traffic increased 107%, while last interaction social conversions grew by 61%
  • The Portent-written 10 Reasons why you should see Alaska in September generated 914 likes and 540 shares in 3 days with an estimated reach of over 31k people

Engagement Goal

There are many options in Alaskan travel – consequently it was imperative for us to differentiate Princess Lodges and build it as a regional authority. In 2013, as part of Portent’s ongoing contract with this long-time client, we were tasked with two goals:

  1. Increase organic traffic to the Princess Lodges website, and
  2. Build Princess Lodges as the go-to authority in Alaskan travel.

Strategy

In order to achieve Princess Lodges’ traffic and authority objectives, Portent developed an overarching content strategy tailored to increase authority with potential customers.

The tactics employed included:

  • Implementing a 70/20/10 approach to developing blog content
  • Using Facebook’s open graph to identify existing likes of customer base to build relevant content
  • Developing social sharing guidelines to improve post visibility and engagement
  • Targeting influential bloggers to outreach new content

Conclusion

Portent’s content strategy contributed to major traffic and audience engagement boosts for Princess Lodges. And after Portent added a blog to Princess Lodges’ sister site – Gray Line of Alaska – in August of 2012, organic traffic doubled year over year for that site as well.