Situation

STA Travel, the largest student travel company worldwide, sought to drive business growth, despite industry declines.  As Vice President of Marketing for STA Travel North America, Linda led a team of 8 in developing marketing strategies to build consumer demand and sales.

Linda led her team in developing grassroots promotions that created a buzz and fostered consumer loyalty.   Her efforts increased company-wide focus on higher margin products.  Linda enhanced cross-departmental collaboration to build and implement fully-integrated plans that worked.  She forged strong alliances with travel partners to increase the size and impact of promotions.

One of the largest initiatives Linda directed was the re-launch of STA Travel’s Blue Ticket, a unique product upon which the company was founded over 25 years ago.  Unfortunately, this product had virtually lost its identity and awareness, and therefore no longer acted as a competitive advantage or prominent source of business.  Linda designed this product re-launch to create substantial awareness and demand for the Blue Ticket.  She led the company in creating “Bluesday,” a landmark promotion and comprehensive product re-launch that reinstated the Blue Ticket as a fundamental revenue driver.

Results

Overall:  Linda contributed substantially to driving sales increases of 50.5% online, 1.3% in retail and 2.4% in the call center.

Blue Ticket:  “Bluesday” was the largest sales day in company history for the North American division, and several other international divisions of STA Travel later modeled the re-launch in their markets.