Case Studies

World Travel Holdings

Building a world-class affiliate program

The Results

With the travel expertise of the Rakuten Advertising team, World Travel Holdings created a net-new affiliate program focused on scaling its digital marketing efforts, attracting new customers, and building brand recognition. Through our travel-specific publisher diversity, audience scaling capabilities, strategic teams, and advanced technology, we’ve built a world-class affiliate program, achieving:

70%+

increase in net new-to-brand cruisers

~30%

shorter average booking window than other marketing channels

60+

publishers driving 50k+ monthly clicks to their sites

About the Brand

World Travel Holdings is the nation’s largest cruise agency and award-winning leisure travel company with a portfolio of nearly 40 diverse brands. In addition to owning some of the largest brands distributing cruises, villas, resort vacations, resort day passes and luxury travel services, World Travel Holdings has a vast portfolio of private-label partnerships comprised of top leisure travel providers, including most U.S. airlines, leading hotel brands and prominent corporations. The company also operates a top-rated travel agency franchise and is consistently recognized as an industry leader in employee engagement and work-at-home employment.

The Story

World Travel Holdings wanted to launch a net new affiliate program for its owned cruise brands and sought a strategic partner that would lead the way in crafting one. This new affiliate program is part of its omnichannel strategy aimed at market share growth by attracting new brand cruisers.

The Rakuten Advertising Solution

The team at World Travel Holdings chose to partner with Rakuten Advertising because we are not only an award-winning, leading affiliate network, but also have over 25 years of expertise in portfolio brand differentiation. World Travel Holdings has several owned cruise brands, with each brand’s program catered to its unique audiences. Our strategy focused on placements with key publishers to promote their world-class offerings. We leveraged:

Cashback Partners

During peak travel weeks, World Travel Holdings and their owned cruise brands strategically used their cashback partners for added exposure. The team opted into sales and increased cashback rates to boost new-to-file customers and increase brand recognition.

Buy-Now-Pay-Later

To provide travelers of all demographics the opportunity to book and enjoy travel, World Travel Holdings partnered with BNPL publishers to allow travelers to book now and pay over time.

Content and Media Partners

To give travelers an additional booking method, World Travel Holdings is leveraging key content and media publishers. This partnership gives customers easy access to the company’s great deals and discounts while also backlinking to World Travel Holdings’ websites to highlight the value of booking through one of their owned cruise brands vs. booking direct.

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