SUCCESS STORIES

Avani Stratos Case Study

Business challenge :

Formerly known as Kalahari Sands Hotel since Independence under the Sands Hotel group,  Avani struggled to appeal to a younger emerged millennial and Generation Z audience. With the advent of bigger shopping malls, the CBD where Avani is situated, began to lose traffic, with more people opting for chill spots out of town.  Avani rebranded its self and launched its rooftop Stratos bar and restaurant in April 2019–  a direct competition to the Hilton Rooftop Skye bar which was becoming a hot-spot just opposite Avani.

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When Ogilvy Namibia took over as the advertising agency for Avani, we developed a digital strategy which aimed to drive promotion of the hotel via digital platforms in an effort to appeal to the younger audience. The launch of the roof top Stratos bar became an opportunity for us to drive market penetration.

Strategy

We sought and invited online Namibian influencers with substantial followers to the launch. A few weeks prior to that, we prepped our influencers with the brand essence and an Avani target audience breakdown, to show them the typical ‘Avani person’ we wanted to attract.

Using Instagram as the main driver, our influencers were given rooms to stay and some a full house experience . They soon started posting and talking about Avani at their own discretion. Our influencers developed their own content plans which they shared with us and we approved. Soon Avani was talk of the town. The launch attracted more media attention than anticipated. Today Avani remains a social hot-spot – following our social media strategy.

On the social media side, we implemented a consistent content marketing strategy – that sought to position Avani and particularly Stratos as the ‘heartbeat of the city’ using hashtag #StratosAtAvani we ran competitions, asked friends to tag eachother gave away tickets to the launch event. To drive this, we used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using most of our paid ads on Facebook and leaving Instagram and Twitter to drive  mostly organic impressions and reach. On the night of the Stratos launch, we used our Live feeds on all platforms to update our growing followers.

Results Facebook

Total fan page increased by 13.2% since previous month
Number of posts increased by 203.6%

Engagement rate grew by 290.1%

Total impressions grew by 116.5%

Results Instagram

Total followers increased by   100%

Engagements alike also grew  100%

AVANI REGIONAL REPORTS FROM HOLDING GROUP MINOR 

June after launch of Stratos

The Minor group compiled results benchmarking each of their Avani hotels in different cities such as Victoria Falls, Gaberone and Malaysia. Highlited below is the performance of Avani WINDHOEK against other hotel groups in Africa

within the same holding group. Avani Windhoek remained best performer in engagements (main KPI) for Minor Group