How Valamar converts travel intent into bookings with real-time context
Valamar partnered with Mastercard Dynamic Yield to act on real-time guest context and re-engage travelers who didn’t complete a booking. By triggering personalized emails at moments of high intent, Valamar created a more responsive booking journey while improving how efficient campaigns are executed across channels.
click-through rate from property abandonment campaigns
revenue per user from cart abandonment emails
click-through rate from cart abandonment emails
Introduction
Great guest experiences don’t start at check-in. They begin the moment someone starts planning a trip — even if it’s just a glance at a property page. That mindset led Valamar, a leading holiday hotel brand in Croatia with a presence in Austria, to adopt Reconnect from Mastercard’s Dynamic Yield suite and engage travelers earlier in the booking journey.
With a diverse portfolio of resorts, hotels and campsites, Valamar attracts families, couples and international travelers seeking high-quality vacation experiences.
The Execution
That’s when Valamar turned to Reconnect, an omnichannel customer journey orchestration app within the Mastercard Dynamic Yield suite. Designed to deliver personalized, event-triggered messages, Reconnect gave Valamar a way to meet guests in the moment.
Reconnect acted as a central middleware layer, interpreting on-site signals such as page views, abandonments or user returns, and translating them into standardized triggers for Valamar’s communication tools. By forwarding these triggers in real time to downstream systems it eliminated the need to duplicate logic across platforms. This centralization reduced architectural complexity, sped up campaign implementation and ensured more consistent, high-level personalization across every channel — all of which are especially crucial in an industry where the customer journey is highly fragmented.
The initial rollout focused on post-website triggers, with two high-impact campaigns: one for cart abandonment and another for product view abandonment — both aimed at recovering potentially lost bookings. Reconnect reviewed the user behavior on the website, including browsing a property or abandoning a cart, and triggered personalized messages based on that activity at the key moment best suited for a conversion. The triggered email passed as JSON-formatted events into Valamar’s system, where the company’s existing email service provider handled delivery.
After partnering with an agency for setup and training, Valamar successfully transitioned campaign management to its internal team.
“With Mastercard’s Dynamic Yield and the Reconnect solution, we were able to turn quick visits into meaningful guest moments. It’s now a core part of how we personalize the booking journey”
– Marijana Gobo, Marketing Automation Manager, Valamar
The Challenge
In a competitive travel and hospitality sector where travelers book just once or twice a year, Valamar faced a clear challenge: limited opportunities to engage and no way to follow up when potential guests dropped off. Every website visit became a high‑stakes moment — one missed touchpoint could mean a lost booking or a missed opportunity to build loyalty.
As guest expectations continued to rise, Valamar recognized that online interactions played an increasingly decisive role in the looking journey. Many visitors browsed hotel pages but left without booking, highlighting the need for more timely, personalized outreach.
But without a way to connect website interests to outbound marketing, valuable follow-up opportunities were being lost.
Operationally, Valamar lacked a central bridge between user engagement on its website and communication tools. The team had to develop and maintain separate integrations — for example, connecting the website to the CRM, then to the email platform — which added complexity and involved duplicating logic across systems.
The team needed a smarter way to make the most of each digital interaction — using real-time context signals to deliver relevant messages without adding operational overhead.
The Execution
That’s when Valamar turned to Reconnect, an omnichannel customer journey orchestration app within the Mastercard Dynamic Yield suite. Designed to deliver personalized, event-triggered messages, Reconnect gave Valamar a way to meet guests in the moment.
Reconnect acted as a central middleware layer, interpreting on-site signals such as page views, abandonments or user returns, and translating them into standardized triggers for Valamar’s communication tools. By forwarding these triggers in real time to downstream systems it eliminated the need to duplicate logic across platforms. This centralization reduced architectural complexity, sped up campaign implementation and ensured more consistent, high-level personalization across every channel — all of which are especially crucial in an industry where the customer journey is highly fragmented.
The initial rollout focused on post-website triggers, with two high-impact campaigns: one for cart abandonment and another for product view abandonment — both aimed at recovering potentially lost bookings. Reconnect reviewed the user behavior on the website, including browsing a property or abandoning a cart, and triggered personalized messages based on that activity at the key moment best suited for a conversion. The triggered email passed as JSON-formatted events into Valamar’s system, where the company’s existing email service provider handled delivery.
After partnering with an agency for setup and training, Valamar successfully transitioned campaign management to its internal team.
“With Dynamic Yield’s Reconnect, we turned guest behavior into revenue. The triggered campaigns didn’t just engage — they converted. ”
– Marino Poropat, Web Customer Journey Manager, Valamar
The Results
From the start, Valamar’s personalized outreach delivered strong performance. Early preference-based emails saw high engagement — a clear sign that timely, relevant messages resonate with travelers planning their next holiday.
Cart abandonment emails generated €22.60 per user with a 21.18% click-through rate.
Property abandonment campaigns, targeting users who viewed properties but didn’t take action, brought in €11.70 per user with a 26.7% click-through rate. These follow-ups turned initial browsing into completed bookings and kept Valamar top of mind — re-engaging potential guests with personalized reminders that encouraged return visits.
Valamar’s results stood well above the industry standard: the average click-through rate in travel, hospitality and leisure is just 1.4%1 — making its performance more than 15 times higher.
Behind the scenes, the program also delivered speed and flexibility. With manual flows eliminated and interest triggers standardized across systems, the team now moves with greater consistency, building a foundation for scalable, cross-channel personalization.
Centralized campaign management and native testing shortened the time from idea to live experience, making room for more experimentation and iteration.
Valamar has made Reconnect a core part of its engagement strategy. The team is now positioned to expand into new channels — including SMS, app push and web push — and explore more complex personalization supported by advanced decisioning logic.
1. Campaign Monitor, Ultimate email marketing benchmarks for 2022: By industry and day, 2022
The Key Takeaway
Valamar transformed limited digital interactions into high-impact moments by acting on real-time guest interest — driving incremental revenue, strong click-through rates and more efficient workflows. For travel and hospitality brands looking to get more from every touchpoint, Mastercard’s Dynamic Yield, including its customer journey orchestration app Reconnect, provides the tools and flexibility to scale personalized engagement.
GET YOUR DEMO
You acknowledge and agree that your personal data will be processed by Dynamic Yield as described in the Privacy Notice. By clicking the button, you confirm that you have read and agree to the Terms of Use.