Who the client is
Grecos Holiday is a Polish travel agency headquartered in Poznań, specializing in organizing holidays in Greece. Since 2006, the company has arranged over a million trips, offering 20 Greek destinations and working with nearly 250 hotels. The Grecos Holiday team consists of more than 100 employees in Poland and twice as many in Greece.
The starting point
- Maintaining cost efficiency in a new season. After the pandemic break, the tourism market began to recover, but at the same time the cost of reaching a purchase-ready user increased. The client wanted to optimize the campaigns for CPA in order to make the most of the seasonal potential.
- Rebuilding trust in travel. Although interest in trips to Greece was gradually growing, some consumers still had doubts about traveling abroad. The communication had to account for the need for safety and flexibility.
- Reaching a precisely defined audience. As a tour operator specializing in a single destination, Grecos needed a strategy that would single out the people genuinely interested in holidays in Greece from a broad pool of potential customers.
- Striking a balance between reach and effectiveness. The budget had to support both the brand and sales goals and the commitments regarding the exposure of selected hotels or departure cities.
What was done
Active budget management by location
The budget was dynamically allocated across different departure cities and selected hotels in Greece. A clear campaign structure (separate campaigns, ad sets and creatives) enabled testing and analysis, so funds went where they delivered the greatest effect.
End-of-season retargeting
Remarketing campaigns for the end of the season, previously not planned by the client, significantly contributed to increasing booking completions. Search trends a few months after the pandemic showed people who had been dreaming of a holiday during lockdown; remarketing reached them once restrictions were lifted. After light support of organic content, comments under posts increased, with tourists sharing memories and positive opinions; the following year a remarketing group was built from these users and targeted again.
Creative testing
Extensive testing of creative materials for Grecos's engaged community, which consists mainly of people over the age of 40. As early as the first year, the video format brought a lower cost per purchase and a lower CPC, despite a CPM more than twice as high. Alongside campaigns optimized for effectiveness, Reach & Frequency campaigns guaranteed a specific number of impressions within a set budget. Users made purchase decisions faster after watching a video than after seeing a static banner. The following year the client provided high-quality videos of the destinations, which lowered the cost of customer acquisition further.
The result
The main goal was to lower the cost per purchase; due to commitments to investors a certain number of impressions also had to be achieved. Across three consecutive post-pandemic holiday seasons:
| Season | Cost per acquisition (CPA) | Outbound CTR |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | High cost of acquisition (starting point) | 0.24% |
| 2022 | Lowered by 73.1% | 0.49% |
| 2023 | A further reduction of 29.7%, a total drop of 81.1% compared to the initial value | 0.67% |
What happened next
Grecos significantly lowered its cost per acquisition and rebuilt trust while strengthening consumer engagement, finding its footing in the post-pandemic market.
"The most important to us was to cooperate with the highly qualified specialists, which will understand our specific industry, that everything is changing rapidly, sometimes even about 180 degrees. And MTA managed to do that. They are flexible and innovative, which allows us to cooperate successfully."
