How data connectivity helped Windstar Cruises optimize spend and increase bookings

Windstar Cruises, a luxury small-ship cruise line known for its intimate and unique itineraries, faced this exact challenge. The brand’s marketing efforts generated engagement — impressions, clicks and quote requests — but lacked a clear connection between digital advertising spend and confirmed reservations.

By partnering with Experian and MMGY, Windstar implemented a data-driven strategy that closed the loop between digital interactions and offline bookings, resulting in over 6,500 attributed bookings, a 13:1 ROAS and a cost-per-booking of just $236.

This campaign partnership turned fragmented marketing signals into a seamless, insight-driven strategy that optimized spend and maximized revenue.

The disconnected booking journey remains a critical challenge to solve

Windstar Cruises had an engaged audience, but marketing blind spots prevented the team from fully optimizing its strategy. Some key challenges included fragmented data signals, limited attribution insights and audience uncertainty — all contributing to a disconnected booking journey. 

The cruise line could see online interactions, but couldn’t link them directly to bookings. Determining which media placements drove revenue was difficult, and without a clear measurement approach, refining who to target and where to allocate spend was challenging.

“The biggest hurdle for travel marketers isn’t just generating interest — it’s proving that interest translates into real revenue,” said Ali Mack, vp of adtech sales at Experian. “Windstar Cruises had strong engagement, but they needed clearer visibility into which audiences and placements were actually driving bookings.” 

Windstar needed a data-driven solution to bridge the gap between marketing investments and real-world results.

A closed-loop attribution solution combining identity resolution and audience insights

Experian and MMGY built a seamless marketing measurement strategy connecting digital campaigns with actual reservations to solve the cruise line’s challenges.

Using Experian’s offline graph, Windstar matched reservation data with its digital advertising efforts, linking stable identity signals (name, address, email, phone) with online interactions. This meant that every ad exposure, site visit and engagement could be mapped back to a future booking, providing a clear, data-backed view of what was working.

MMGY utilized its travel audience modeling platform, enriched with Experian’s consumer intent data, to segment Windstar’s potential guests more effectively. To do so, MMGY integrated its own travel intelligence, Experian’s data and Windstar’s first-party data. 

“By combining identity resolution with online marketing investment and offline customer purchase data, we were able to pinpoint the highest-value travelers for Windstar, who were otherwise unable to be tracked,” said Jessica Schultz, evp of media and analytics at MMGY. “This wasn’t just about measuring results — it was about optimizing every marketing dollar to bring in more qualified passengers at a lower cost.”

Windstar gained deeper insight into who their high-value travelers were, where they consumed media and what influenced their booking decisions.

Maximizing spend efficiency helps lead to measurable impact

This identity-driven strategy allowed Windstar to allocate budget to the highest-performing tactics, refine messaging based on audience behaviors and adjust campaign tactics in real-time to improve engagement. 

The result was more efficient targeting, lower acquisition costs and a direct line of sight into how every marketing dollar translated into revenue.

By combining data connectivity, advanced audience segmentation and precise attribution, Windstar Cruises saw significant business impacts such as over 6,500 bookings attributed to digital efforts, totaling over $20 million in revenue; 13:1 ROAS; $236 cost-per-booking, enabling greater efficiency in acquisition strategies and 28:1 ROAS for audiences using MMGY’s technology, proving the power of advanced segmentation. 

This helped Windstar optimize current campaigns while providing a blueprint for smarter future marketing investments.

Why data connectivity matters for travel and hospitality

Windstar Cruises’ success highlights a critical shift for the travel and hospitality industry: Traditional metrics aren’t enough.

In the modern age, brands need to go beyond clicks and impressions to measure real booking impact, use identity-driven insights to refine audience targeting and optimize media spend in real-time to maximize ROI.

Investing in data connectivity and identity resolution is the key to sustainable success for travel brands looking to enhance measurement, drive more bookings and improve efficiency.

With Experian’s data and technology, and MMGY’s audience intelligence, Windstar Cruises didn’t just refine its marketing strategy, it transformed the way it measures success.

For marketers across travel, hospitality and beyond, this proves that the ability to close the attribution loop isn’t just an advantage, it’s a necessity.

Sponsored by Experian