New Entrant: How global giant ADARA plans to plug NZ tourism's data gap

A global shift towards cost-effective, performance-driven marketing solutions has prompted US travel data co-operative, ADARA, to enter the New Zealand market via a new partnership with Auckland-based Tomahawk.

ADARA’s vice president of tourism for Asia Pacific, Matthew Zatto, tells us about the Californian-headquartered company, what expertise this tie-up is going to offer New Zealand tourism, and who should tap into the exciting new service offered by the partners.

ADARA is not a name many in NZ would be familiar with – can you tell us more about the company? 

ADARA is a Silicon Valley-based data solutions company for the travel & tourism industry.

Founded back in 2009, we have built the world’s travel data co-op that connects the search, booking and loyalty data of over 200 of the biggest travel brands  – Marriott, Accor and Singapore Airlines to name a few.

What sets us apart, is the fact that all of this data is shared in real-time so we have the most comprehensive view of the traveller: their behaviours across brands, channels, and devices.

Your clients include travel and destination marketers from around the globe. What does ADARA do for them?

In a nutshell, we make travel and destination marketers smarter by using our network of travel brands to deliver critical intelligence that drives personalization and relevance throughout the customer’s journey, resulting in more meaningful and profitable relationships.

This means it can transform how clients leverage consumer insight at every stage—learn, act, measure and modify–to unleash the revenue potential of each individual.

Why did ADARA team up with Tomahawk to enter the New Zealand and Pacific market? How will the partnership work?

Given that tourism is one of the biggest sectors of the Kiwi economy, we were well aware of the opportunity to support clients with advertising and analytics intelligence solutions.

We see a big shift happening in travel and tourism towards cost-effective, performance-driven marketing solutions, so felt the time was right for us to enter the NZ and Pacific Island market.

We are excited to be working with travel and tourism marketing specialist, Tomahawk. All the great work that they have been doing with clients in New Zealand made them a clear choice for partner. They will effectively be our extension in the market, and we’ll work closely to support each and every client.

Further to this partnership, we will be adding ResBook search and booking data into our ecosystem. Adding this incremental data to our global co-op will give us unrivaled visibility into the market which will result in better insights, better campaign performance and subsequently return for our clients.

And, we look forward to adding more data in the New Zealand market, partner by partner.

So, it sounds like ADARA is going to be able to plug a data gap for some players in the NZ market such as Regional Tourism Organisations, as well adding value for other businesses that want a deeper understanding of customer behaviour?  

That’s right. The great thing about data is that it gives clarity to what is working and what isn’t. This is especially true with destination marketers as they aren’t transactional like their private sector counterparts.

As a tourism organization, your objective is to drive the highest value travelers to your destination in the most cost-effective way. There is enormous pressure to deliver marketing activities that generate a return for not only your industry stakeholders but your taxpayer as well.

The challenge that tourism boards have is that they have a major blindspot in their marketing intelligence because of this lack of data. ADARA is a game changer for the RTOs who will now be able to map confirmed bookings and quality of trip metrics back to their online marketing investments.

They will finally be able to show the economic impact of their efforts, which will help them defend their budget and evolve their strategies to better target the right traveller at the right time with the right message. This is the holy grail of tourism marketing!

The opportunity is just as strong for players in other categories, as ADARA’s deterministic data set can give you understanding of what your customer’s behaviour is before they enter your universe.

Can you tell us what is in the ADARA/Tomahawk special sauce?  

ADARA’s suite of marketing technology and measurement products is totally unique. It was actually after a presentation about our unique measurement tool, ADARA Impact at the PATA Insights conference last year in Auckland that Tomahawk approached us about our plans for the NZ market.

We were impressed by their market knowledge and the comprehensive nature of their tourism marketing business. but the key differentiator for us was Tomahawk’s ResBook platform and the incremental data that we could add to the co-op. They were at the forefront of data in the market so it was an obvious choice to move forward with them. 

If any NZ businesses want to learn more about how they could benefit from the added insight you offer, who should they reach out to? That is a great question!

I’m proud to say that the team at Tomahawk is ready and able to support your marketing objectives. You can reach them at: [email protected] or call Seb McKinnon on 021 575 939 

Content sourced from Tourism Ticker