Outrigger is a hospitality brand built on a trinity of HOST, GUEST, and PLACE. Coming out of the pandemic, the brand saw a surge in online engagement and bookings, but its website wasn't built to make the most of it. Content was scattered across a sprawl of separate microsites, so guests had to hop between pages just to piece together the basics: which property, which rooms, what amenities, where to eat, what made each place worth visiting. Often those details were missing entirely. The experience was disjointed and, at times, frustrating, and it did little to convey the sense of place that defines the brand. Behind the scenes the picture was no better. The old Sitecore site gave the team no single view of customer behavior, little room for personalization, and no real way to run experiments. So Outrigger partnered with Optimizely and digital agency Rightpoint to rebuild its digital presence from the ground up.
Outrigger grows bookings 77% in less than a year, with Optimizely One
Increase in bookings
Increase in revenue
Months to launch
Outrigger increase revenue by 63% and nights booked by 77% in less than a year via a strategic experimentation and personalization program.
One brand, too many sites
Buildin the program in five months
What followed was fast. In five months, Outrigger went from a standing start to a fully functioning experimentation and personalization program, with Optimizely One at the center of its stack: the CMS, Optimizely Data Platform (ODP), real-time segments, and Web Experimentation. Rather than switch everything on at once, the team worked in phases, leading with strategy, adding the right products at the right time, then using ODP data to optimize as they went.
The CMS came first, and it changed how Outrigger thought about its own website. Grounded in voice-of-customer and market research, the team stopped designing around booking a hotel room and started designing around planning a trip. That reframe, built on high-fidelity imagery and a mix of inspiration and practical detail, surfaced the moments that actually shape a traveler's decisions, and let the brand lead with storytelling and a real sense of place. A smarter booking widget did double duty underneath it all, streamlining the booking itself while capturing guest data and feeding real-time segmentation.
Next came the data. Outrigger's customer insight had always been scattered, and ODP finally pulled it into one place, giving the team its first complete view of guest preferences and behavior. That became the foundation for everything personalized that followed. "It's important to make sure the experience you're trying to deliver is truly personalized at every touchpoint," says Bryan Hopkins, Technical Marketing Strategist at Outrigger. "We want to make sure we're always putting that preferred product in front of the customer." With real-time segments, metrics, and event tracking in place, the team categorized channels by how well they could feed ODP, then connected its CRM and loyalty program to widen the picture further.
With unified data behind it, Web Experimentation is where the personalization came to life, and it cut the time to update content sitewide by sixfold. Outrigger started small, testing navigation tweaks and call-to-action buttons, then matured into multivariate and split-URL tests that reached deeper into the conversion funnel. The discipline was in the approach. Going in, the team led with data and Hotjar heat maps to prioritize what mattered instead of overloading the backlog. Coming out, every experiment counted as a learning, win or lose. For Bryan, the biggest wins are the ones that stick: "In our experimentation program, the ultimate win is always when we come out with an experience experiment that results in a personalization strategy that now becomes a permanent part of our site architecture."
We went from ground zero to a fully functioning program powered by CDP, real-time segments, experimentation - all within a five-month period. The program is scaling, our velocity is awesome, and we’re excited about the future.Bryan Hopkins|Technical Marketing Strategist
Bookings up 77%, revenue up 63%
The results made the case on their own. Outrigger's new content experience, real-time segmentation, and experimentation drove a 77% increase in bookings and a 63% rise in revenue year over year, along with a sixfold cut in content update times that kept the whole operation nimble. A sharper focus on mid-funnel metrics moved more visitors into the booking flow, and underneath all of it sat that single, unified view of the guest. "We went from ground zero to a fully functioning program powered by CDP, real-time segments, experimentation - all within a five-month period," Bryan says. "The program is scaling, our velocity is awesome, and we're excited about the future."
It’s important to make sure the experience you’re trying to deliver is truly personalized at every touchpoint. We want to make sure we’re always putting that preferred product in front of the customer.Bryan Hopkins|Technical Marketing Strategist
What Outrigger's building next
That future is already taking shape. The team is planning more than 100 segments and events, and has connected its CRM and guest loyalty program to keep feeding ODP. Next up is a new branded app, starting with CRM, cart abandonment, and retargeting emails.
Through all of it, Outrigger stays grounded in HOST, GUEST, and PLACE. The goal hasn't changed: travel experiences that capture the essence of hospitality, put the guest first, and carry a genuine sense of place. What's different now is the foundation underneath. A connected program and a single view of the customer let the brand keep delivering on those values, with Optimizely One carrying them into every part of the experience.