In June 2025, Valamar announced that direct sales accounted for 64% of its sales system. Behind that share were years of developing booking channels, building the brand, and investing in digital marketing. For Valamar and the agency SeekandHit, which had spent years contributing to the company’s digital advertising development, this starting position meant that the next stage of growth would not be found simply through another round of optimization of existing campaigns.
Search advertising was already well developed, campaigns were adapted to different stages of holiday planning, and results were evaluated through bookings and revenue. Still, relying on guests who already knew Valamar and users actively searching for accommodation had its limitations. To sustain growth, the company needed to attract people who had never stayed at its hotels and campsites.
They looked for the answer in data about those who had. Information about previous stays, traditionally used to reconnect with existing guests, was given a new purpose: helping advertising platforms recognize the guests Valamar already knew, so campaigns could be directed more strongly toward new ones.
This led to The Valamar Blueprint: Advanced Data Integration and Full-Funnel Growth, a project awarded at the MIXX Awards Croatia 2026 in the Direct Response and Lead Generation Campaign category. Its results went beyond new advertising settings. Between January 1 and September 24, 2025, revenue increased by 20% with a 14% increase in investment, while nearly three-quarters of bookings in dedicated acquisition campaigns came from guests who had never previously stayed at Valamar properties.
Before the Blueprint: How Much Does Advertising Really Contribute?
Valamar and SeekandHit had worked for years to increase direct bookings, but they did not rely solely on the results reported by advertising platforms. During an earlier phase of their collaboration, they even tested temporarily pausing ads that appeared when users searched for Valamar by name, to determine whether users would continue booking accommodation without them. For a brand with an established direct sales system, this distinction matters: a booking attributed to a campaign does not necessarily mean it would not have happened without that campaign. Such experiments became part of a broader approach in which advertising effectiveness was increasingly evaluated against actual bookings and revenue.
The collaboration gradually evolved from managing search campaigns toward more advanced measurement, analytics, and advertising across different stages of travel planning. Beyond users already searching for Valamar accommodation, the partners needed to reach those who were only beginning to consider a destination or type of holiday. At the same time, changes in privacy regulations made tracking the customer journey more difficult, while data on guests, bookings, and their behavior was distributed across different systems. To use this information for more precise advertising, the data needed to be connected, its quality verified, and regular updates ensured, with appropriate user consent.
Their previous experience had demonstrated the importance of distinguishing between demand that already exists and demand that marketing can additionally generate, and it was precisely this experience that provided the foundation for the Blueprint. Data on previous stays, which could be used to reconnect with existing guests, took on a new role: helping advertising algorithms recognize known users and direct campaigns more strongly toward people who had never stayed at Valamar properties. Years of work on measurement and optimization thus found a concrete application in a challenge that had become important for further growth: acquiring new guests.
How Existing Guests Became a Signal for Finding New Ones
The decision to book a holiday often takes weeks. Guests research destinations, compare accommodation options, and revisit offers before deciding where to travel. After years of optimizing campaigns targeting users who already showed an interest in booking, Valamar and SeekandHit identified opportunities for further growth in the earlier stages of this process. For the 2025 season, they set a goal of achieving at least 15% revenue growth while attracting new guests and developing a high-value customer base.
To turn existing data into an acquisition tool, they integrated information from Google Analytics 4, CRM, call centers, and advertising platforms into Google BigQuery. Based on previous stay data, they created an audience of known guests that was updated daily and transferred to Google Ads, subject to appropriate consent. This provided algorithms in New Guest Acquisition campaigns with a signal identifying users who had already stayed at Valamar, allowing advertising to be directed more strongly toward new guests. Data that had previously been used to bring back existing guests was now helping find those who had yet to visit.
Measurement reliability was further improved through server-side tracking, Conversions API (CAPI), and Enhanced Conversions, which helped address data gaps resulting from changes in privacy regulations. SeekandHit’s performance, measurement, data, and engineering teams worked with Valamar’s internal teams to connect data sources, verify data quality, and automate their daily use. This gave the Blueprint a foundation for continuous campaign adjustments without relying on occasional manual updates.
From Initial Inspiration to Booking
Data on known guests formed the basis of acquisition campaigns on Google Ads, but the Blueprint also covered other channels corresponding to different stages of travel planning. Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest helped engage users who were just beginning to explore destinations and holiday options, while also serving to attract guests directly. Google, Microsoft, and Seznam played an important role during active searches, when users were already looking for a particular hotel, destination, or Valamar offer.
Remarketing and dynamic remarketing were used for users who had browsed accommodation options but had not completed a booking. While the former maintained the brand’s presence during the decision-making process, the latter enabled ads to display hotels users had previously considered. The channels were therefore not treated as separate campaigns but as interconnected parts of the customer journey, from initial interest to final booking.
Automation enabled prepared data, conversion signals, dynamic feeds, and channel-specific creative variations to be used in campaign optimization. Rather than developing a separate artificial intelligence system to create hotel offers, SeekandHit relied on the existing algorithms of advertising platforms, providing them with better-quality data and clearer business objectives. This gave technology a concrete role in daily campaign management, rather than merely in measuring their performance.
Growth Driven by More Than Returning Guests
Between January 1 and September 24, 2025, the period covered by the MIXX Awards Croatia entry, the project achieved 20% growth in total revenue with a 14% increase in investment, while the average booking value rose by 8%. However, for a project focused on attracting a new audience, a particularly important figure was that 72% of bookings in dedicated New Guest Acquisition campaigns came from new guests. Growth therefore did not rely solely on returning guests, as the campaigns also succeeded in attracting people who had never previously stayed at Valamar properties.
Results were monitored through Google Analytics and advertising platform reports, with additional verification of bookings and revenue against Valamar’s internal data. The figures from the MIXX entry refer to the award-winning project and the specified period, rather than the company’s overall annual business results. The previously reported 64% share of direct sales also relates to Valamar’s broader sales system.
For Valamar and SeekandHit, the significance of these results extended beyond exceeding the planned revenue growth. Revenue grew faster than investment, most bookings in dedicated acquisition campaigns came from new guests, and the daily preparation and activation of data became a repeatable process. Alongside its results in a single season, the Blueprint thus established a foundation for further development of guest acquisition in the years ahead.
A Partnership That Evolves Alongside the Business
The award for The Valamar Blueprint at the MIXX Awards Croatia 2026 continues a series of recognitions marking the long-standing collaboration between Valamar and SeekandHit. Their joint projects previously received SoMo Global and Special Mention by Httpool in 2023, MIXX Awards Croatia Best in Show in 2024 for The Data Driven Stay, and Special Mention by Aleph in 2025. Behind these recognitions was a partnership that evolved from managing performance campaigns into joint work on measurement, experimentation, and the development of data solutions.
An important part of this collaboration became testing new approaches in individual markets, campaigns, or segments before expanding them based on achieved results. SeekandHit’s long-standing understanding of Valamar’s business needs enabled the agency to develop technological solutions aligned with specific sales objectives. The Blueprint thus emerged from experience the teams had built over the years, connecting earlier insights into advertising effectiveness with new opportunities to use first-party data.
After data on existing guests helped attract new ones, Valamar and SeekandHit continue developing ways to assess their long-term value and allocate marketing investments more effectively. The Blueprint is therefore one stage of a collaboration in which each new solution builds on previous experience, while technology develops according to business needs.
The Team Behind the Project
At SeekandHit, the project was led by Duje Kundid (Project Lead), alongside Antonio Štimac (Account Manager GAds), Antea Ivković (Account Manager Meta), Dora Žurić (Account Manager), Marja Kraljević and Božena Perić (Project Managers).
Measurement and data infrastructure were handled by Petar Ilak (Measurement Team Lead), Mirko Jadrić (Measurement Project Manager), Jure Rakela (Junior Measurement Specialist), Anđela Turković and Marin Perić Radan (Senior QA Engineers), together with Siniša Ercegović (Engineering Manager), Joško Buva (Director of Marketing), and Ivan Frančešević (Chief Data Officer).
The Valamar team included Domagoj Vidović, Ivan Petrović, Ines Paušić, and Gorazd Surla.
