TUI boosts revenue among early-bird travelers with Criteo and Tealium

The Challenge: Personalizing customer experiences and expanding reach

TUI is a leading global travel and leisure experience company that makes holiday dreams come true for people around the world. With over twenty-one million customers worldwide and 7.5 million customers within their core market Germany, the company provides personalized experiences that cater to travelers’ various needs and journeys.

Helping more customers enjoy memorable travel experiences is central to TUI’s strategy. To achieve this, the company wanted to re-engage their large base of loyal customers while also acquiring and engaging new customer groups.

The Solution: Leveraging Criteo and Tealium to launch targeted campaigns

TUI partnered with Criteo to expand their customer growth strategy beyond retargeting. Using Tealium’s Customer Data Platform (CDP) integrated with Criteo, TUI.com was able to group customers based on common behaviors and align their campaign objectives with strategically aligned audiences. Criteo used consented and enriched data from Tealium to power Criteo AI models, which significantly enhanced their reach and targeting capabilities.

Greta Licht, Head of Digital Performance Marketing & Attribution from TUI.com shared, “With Criteo, we reach numerous prospects who haven’t yet interacted with TUI.com and reactivate existing customers across the open web. Their inspiring creative formats and robust commerce dataset help us connect with users throughout their entire journey.”

Criteo helped amongst others TUI launch an “Early Bird” campaign that targeted customers who were planning their summer holidays early in the year. The campaign focused on four key audience segments:

1. Tealium users: TUI targeted existing customers who previously booked at least one trip on TUI.com in order to rekindle their travel memories and encourage them to book their next getaway. This approach generated an 80% match rate, ensuring a significant portion of customer data was effectively utilized.
2. Lookalike bookers: Criteo helped TUI model this segment based on the Tealium audience to target new prospects and drive awareness around TUI’s services and summer deals.
3. Active travel planners: TUI reached early travel intent audiences who were actively searching for getaway options, further expanding TUI’s pool of prospects.
4. Retargeting visitors: TUI re-engaged recent site visitors who dropped off from TUI.com without booking, encouraging them to complete their journey.

The Results: Securing impressive revenue growth and customer engagement

Criteo-powered data and AI helped TUI significantly enhance their reach, optimize their ad placements, and maximize their campaign performance.

The travel company saw a 40% higher return on ad spend by combining Criteo commerce audiences with Tealium segments, a 60% lower cost per click, and a 56% lower cost per visit for the early bird campaign compared to retargeting efforts. By placing customer needs at the core of their strategy, TUI re-engaged loyal customers and expanded their reach to prospects, maintaining high performance and cost efficiency.

“Criteo’s ability to leverage our Tealium segments was key to the success of our Early Bird campaign, which became our most successful one-off campaign in terms of revenue, generating a 73% increase compared to the second-best comparable campaign. Their personalized approach supports TUI’s long-term digital growth by efficiently expanding our customer base,” said Janice Paschek, Data Analyst from TUI.com.