How RCI® generated $13MM in revenue through website personalization

Resort Condominium International, also known as RCI®, is the world’s largest timeshare exchange and leisure travel company, with more than 4,200 timeshare resorts worldwide. They are a subsidiary of Travel and Leisure Co.

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RCI provides a platform for vacation owners to exchange their ownership or timeshare weeks for stays at other affiliated resorts around the world. RCI operates on a membership basis. Individuals or families become RCI members by purchasing vacation ownership or timeshare intervals at affiliated resorts. The core service provided by RCI is vacation exchange. Members can deposit their owned week or points with RCI and, in return, have access to a wide array of vacation destinations within the RCI network.

RCI had the basics down for website personalization—utilizing database calls to their data layer using a few attributes tied to customer profiles such as language, membership type, and tier level. Those attributes were used to display a dynamic website header tailored to the customer based on information provided.

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The team at RCI sought to do greater personalization across the website using more customer attributes and segments. In addition, they sought to empower customer service reps with more valuable customer data to deliver a better customer experience.

The solution: Simon Data’s Audience API. Every time a member logs onto the RCI website, their app layer calls the Audience API to pull in that customer’s profile information and/or the segment(s) they’re a part of, and stores it within their data layer. RCI is pinging that Audience API 50K to 100K times daily. 

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RCI now has 20 personalization variables stored in a customer’s profile and tied to their Next Best Action (NBA) model. This allows them to display personalized content on their login portal and/or website homepage e.g., travel recommendations based on member behavior or geotargeted lookalike personas.

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Call Center is also utilizing the Audience API to access more valuable customer information such as their membership/purchase history and better serve them.Because this data is stored in the Simon CDP to pull from and use for segmentation, RCI can dictate content on the website and also across other marketing and communication channels.

• RCI launched these new website capabilities in 2021 and from that point they have been able to generate $13MM in revenue from direct bookings via personalized website content.
• RCI has seen a 4.5% increase in bookings against their ‘Not Likely To Book’ segments— customers that have difficulty finding or committing to travel.

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What’s next? By June 2024, the entire page will be content driven by our Audience API and will send over a number of various customer attributes and/or segments to serve up content. One of the big additions to this new redesign is that it will allow the RCI team to develop and control the content on that page to update as quickly as marketing wants it updated. Session data will also be able to be stored and used across various other webpages of the site.