In a recent post, we reviewed Rue La La, the boutique shopping club positioned as a marketing distribution partner for travel and experiences. Over the past year, Rue La La has entered the travel marketing space and made a name for itself promoting high end hotels and destinations to its wealthy (and primarily female) membership.

To dig deeper, we interviewed one New York luxury hotel that offered a promotion through Rue La La. We spoke with a corporate marketing representative about how the Rue La La partnership worked and how it benefited the hotel. The hotel and representative asked to remain anonymous.

The property found that the marketing distribution model made it easy to work with Rue La La. The marketing representative put together a package and Rue La La provided feedback and guidance on how to appeal to their core demographic and inspire a “got to have it” impulse. “It’s a win-win situation for the hotel and Rue La La, they get to distribute exciting travel discounts to their member base and the hotel gets to reach a new audience,” says the representative.

Rue La La primarily drew new customers to the hotel, which is preferable to offering core customers a discount on a room they might have been prepared to purchase at the full rate. The new customers were mostly from the Northeast and were predominantly female. As we cited in the previous post one of Rue La La’s key benefits is their targeted access to wealthy women.

The Rue La La promotion faithfully communicated the hotel’s brand and position. “We provided Rue La La our hotel’s best selling points and features and gave them our best photography. The Rue La La creative team took that information and ran with it to create the imagery used to showcase the promotion on their site,” says the rep.

The hotel found the promotion easier to conduct than some other strategies. As a marketing distribution partner, Rue La La does not have a booking engine. Instead the promotion relied on vouchers that were redeemed by phone. “Make sure you have a strong call center,” cautions the marketing rep.

Overall, Rue La La fit well into the New York luxury hotel’s down-market strategy of retaining current customers through customer service, loyalty incentives and social media while reaching new audiences through 3rd party distribution channels.

Please share your experiences with private sale or marketing distribution partners in the comments below