Owned and managed by SANI SA, Sani Resort which was founded in 1971 is a 5 star family-owned luxury resort complex and ecological reserve, with a yacht marina and four distinct hotels, located on the Kassandra Peninsular in Halkidiki, Greece.  At the heart of the company’s vision is its dedication to sustainability and this is evidenced in its various environmental and community initiatives that strive to preserve biodiversity of the local environment and reduce carbon footprint. In 2016, the famous LA-based assets management firm Oaktree Capital has joined Sani SA in forming a new venture in tourism which aims to expand the brand and invest in related projects across Greece. Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Hermes GPE are also participating in the venture.

We were approached by SANI SA in 2011 primarily to develop the online sales channel at Sani Resort through their website and to raise brand awareness of the resort to international travellers, in a way that amplified the message that Sani Resort is the go-to European luxury resort destination for a diverse mix of guests. 

Digital marketing activities by SANI were virtually non-existent at the time and we were therefore responsible for creating and executing a complete digital strategy that encompassed the entire resort, from scratch.  

In addition, in our effort to increase direct sales from the website we had to take into consideration the increased competition from other resorts, other booking engines, travel agencies and all the rest factors that influence the behaviour of the global luxury traveller.

Furthermore, we knew that the luxury hotel industry was evolving, particularly by way of the changing behaviours of luxury travellers regarding the purchasing of travel; and also in terms of the transformation of brand storytelling and communication to a diverse audience that was quickly becoming more tech savvy and who was looking for more personalized engagement with a brand.  Luxury brands were becoming publishers in their own right and SANI had to adapt to this trend in order to capture existing and future audiences.

It was therefore clear that we needed to construct a new content marketing strategy that included the creation of a new SANI blog with material for lifestyle messaging that SANI wanted to communicate.

Working closely with SANI SA, we created a digital strategy that included implementing specific cross channel campaigns which communicated different messages to targeted audiences so as to drive the target audience back to Sani Resort’s website. 

The planning and execution of the digital strategy was rather complex as we had to research, target and execute across many different geographies (UK, Russia, Germany and France etc) and many different consumer segments (luxury family traveller, luxury wellness traveller etc) in order to increase direct bookings for all the 4 different luxury hotels of the resort.

We made use of global search, display and remarketing campaigns across the Google network and Yandex so as to reach online users wherever they are located on the web and we also created a variety of landing pages with targeted calls to action so as to convert visitors to leads and generate sales.

Since 2011 to date, the digital strategy has had to be adjusted continually in order to adapt to changes not only in technology and competition, but also with the evolution of the resort in terms of price and also aesthetics.

We also designed and implemented a content marketing strategy that included the creation of the SANI blog which today is still producing material that conveys its luxury lifestyle message in a way that engages every generation of luxury travellers.