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About Sykes Holiday Cottages
Sykes Holiday Cottages are one of the UKs leading independent holiday cottage rental agencies with over 30 years’ experience. Our aim is to become the number one provider of UK breaks, by delivering the best choice of holiday homes and unrivalled service to our customers and property owners alike. Our Owners are a fundamental part of Sykes; currently over 10,000 Owners make up the 20,000+ properties onsite. With these great properties onsite, our next goal is to ensure we achieve as close to 100% occupancy as possible across the year through both the website and the App, bringing people together to create lasting memories with a positive impact on people and planet. The company is built on 4 key values which is what unites colleagues across the business: Be One Team, Own It, Communicate Honestly & Learn, Grow, and Innovate. These values encourage us work collaboratively, try new things whilst always keeping in mind, the bigger picture.
About our Award-Winning Team
The team went through a period of intense change losing the previous head of department, which went unfilled for 3 months. A manager who had been at the business for 9 years and 2 senior executives also left. Since, 6 team members joined and the team have pulled together to drive performance forward. Existing team members were asked to train new starters at an extremely fast pace.
The team delivered the second biggest year for bookings in the company’s history alongside some record-breaking days for App performance and Property Recruitment through PPC in the face of extremely challenging circumstances.
From falling behind on targets, the whole team managed to catch up to, and then surpass the targets set at the start of the year, demonstrating extreme resilience, and determination when facing challenging operating conditions.
“It has not been easy, and I am immensely proud of the dedication, determination and resolve the team has shown to deliver exceptional results. I can honestly say that I have never been more impressed by so many in a team and this sentiment is echoed throughout the business as the team’s profile has grown with each achievement. The sheer volume of work delivered in the timeframe was incredible and we have only included a selection of delivered initiatives in this submission.” Paul Oates – Head of Performance Media.
Awards Testimonial
Winning Team of the Year has been an immensely satisfying outcome for us all and an exclamation mark on the commitment, focus and dedication we’ve shown this year.
Within our Consumer Team we have evolved strategies drastically and successfully in a short space of time across all areas of paid media, from successfully adopting Broad Match to drive on average a 12% lower cost per booking across over two dozen Paid Search accounts, to shifting our upper-funnel and branding activities to a data-led, digital-first approach.
“On a personal level, having worked across paid media within the travel sector for over 6 years and across two continents, this win solidifies my belief that this is as talented a bunch of paid media professionals that I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with. A special mention to my team – Lisa, Carey, and Erin, without which none of our achievements across this year could have been possible.” – Donnacha McCormack, Performance Media Manager (Consumer)
One of our key pillars for Sykes’ success is the property recruitment side of the business. Within our Performance Media team, 5 members have been actively working towards delivering leads for potential new owners and ensuring we keep the Sykes property portfolio replenished with great quality holiday homes ready to take bookings.
Over the past year, the team have had external pressures from the large economic factors at play throughout the year; including interest rate increases to >5% in May 2023, which had not been seen since ~2007, as well as banks withdrawing offers in June 2023 due to the economic uncertainty and the interest rate hikes. All of this, topped with the ongoing cost of living crisis, this has inevitably had an impact on our Thinking of Buying Potential New Owners as there is less appetite within the market. Throughout all of this, we’ve managed to maintain our dominance within the tough market. Our Absolute Top Impression Share has increased +22% with our Top of page rate seeing an increase of +24%; we are ensuring that we are remaining relevant and top of mind (& SERP) with users.
“Our market share remaining in such a strong place YoY is a testament to the work and efforts the team have put in over the past 12 months; Gary Dutton, Paul Hughes, Chris Hughes & Jen Murphy have been a pivotal part of the success and I’m very proud of the work we’ve delivered.” – Natalie Hassall, Performance Media Manager (Owner).
App remains an essential growth channel for Sykes Cottages with this last year seeing incredible numbers, given a variety of challenging circumstances.
During the last 12 months the small team of 3 has continued to run BAU campaigns on both Meta and Google, as well as adopting new channels to further increase installs of the app, such as TikTok and YouTube. A/B testing has also played a crucial part in all the successes the app has had, with the team constantly striving to ensure campaigns are at their most efficient.
Installs of the Sykes app was higher than ever in the last year, with a record month in January 2024, which was 65% growth compared to January 2023. Combine that with a lower than average uninstall rate, and the app now has an install base of over 1.3 million.
All these amazing numbers led to the Sykes app peaking at number 5 in the Google Play Store rankings, and 6th in the iPad rankings, evidence, and reward for the hard work the team has put in.
“The App team have been fundamental in the growth of the business over the past year; even faced with very challenging targets, they’ve taken it in their stride. Katie Riley & Ethan Bessell, with their can-do attitude have been critical in the success of the app and we’re so appreciative of the hard work they’ve put into these amazing growth numbers: they deserve every accolade they get.” – Sarah McColl, App Lead.
None of this would have been possible without the strong leadership of our Head of Performance Media Paul, matched throughout the entire team in being forward thinking, proactive, collaborative, and relentless in finding greater efficiency and scalability.
Finishing the year with this award became an objective we set out to achieve during the Summer of 2023 and something we as a team had been working towards. What is the most satisfying aspect of our win is the fact we had too many data-led wins across Consumer, App, and our Owner ops to fit in the submission!
This win doesn’t stop here, giving us the confidence to continue our great momentum into 2024 as we continue to deliver industry-leading performance for Sykes and hoard more accolades than Christopher Nolan in the upcoming weeks and months
