Case Study · Travel & Hospitality
When membership is free, the booking is what counts
Private Upgrades gets its members room upgrades and breakfast, plus hotel credit and early check-in at five-star hotels. The programme is run from Switzerland by the luxury travel agency behind Deluxe Targets. Membership is free, the money is made on the booking, and we aligned every measure with that.
I'll show you where your shop loses buyers.
A product without a price tag
Free memberships sound like an easy sell. Signing up is quick, and who doesn't like upgrades? The value for the business comes with the booking. A sign-up is a promise waiting to be kept, and the interesting question is which members actually travel. That question is best answered with a clear target metric.
Without a price there is no classic purchase to measure advertising and website against. The real conversion happens later, when a member books a trip. In luxury travel, tech matters too. Because a single booking is worth a lot, every minute the website is up counts. A stable website is part of the sale here.
One target metric for acquisition and website
We set the booking as the single target metric. Registration is an intermediate step. We aligned all acquisition with this, so a cheap sign-up without a booking counts for little. Google Ads and Outbrain provide the paid reach, and every campaign is measured by whether the members it wins go on to book. This clear yardstick makes budget decisions simple.
We reached the existing member base through email campaigns, because people who are already members mostly need a good reason to book. For the website we produced wireframes that follow the same logic, with the booking as the goal of every page. On top of that came ongoing uptime monitoring. In luxury travel every single booking is worth a lot, and the website should be ready for it at all times.
The right target metric for free models
With free models it is tempting to count sign-ups. They rise fast and look good in reports. We prefer to target the action that actually makes money, even if it happens less often and later. That changes which channels you choose and how you judge every campaign. A channel that brings many sign-ups and few bookings stands out at once, and budget moves to where people book. With high booking values, website uptime belongs on the list too.
Let’s start with your shop.
In the Dropoff Analysis you see where your shop loses buyers. Afterwards you know where the first step pays off.