Customer Award

Miral

Miral boosts revenues with Sitecore-powered digital experience solution

Headless Sitecore DXP raises conversion rates, increases cross-sales, and enables seamless booking experience at top entertainment and leisure experiences provider.

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Category Winner

Judges Choice

550%

Increase in conversion rates on Yasisland.com

200%

Year-on-year revenue growth for Yasisland.com

50%

Faster go-to-market timelines

15%

Longer visits across all websites

15%

Increase in returning visitors across all websites

7

Destinations, experiences, developments, and portfolios powered by Sitecore

Project brief

Miral is the leading creator of immersive theme parks, destinations and experiences in Abu Dhabi and contributes to both the growth of the leisure and entertainment industry and Abu Dhabi’s economic diversification. Miral’s portfolio of leisure and entertainment venues attracts visitors from across the world and plays a key role in accelerating the Emirates’ tourism vision and growth. Responsible for the development of Yas Island and overseeing Saadiyat Island's Destination Management Strategy, Miral takes pride in delivering world-class entertainment, leisure, culture, sport, dining, retail, and hospitality experiences.

To ensure its online presence matched the quality of its real-world experiences, the company embarked on a digital transformation journey across all six of its websites and its mobile app. With a headless, centralized architecture built on Sitecore, Miral is delivering best-in-class digital experiences, seamless booking, and personalization, which have improved conversion rates and boosted revenues.

miral website screenshot

About

Miral Destinations

Travel and Hospitality

EMEA

Products

XP

XM

Challenge

Building customer-centric digital experiences

Miral’s websites and app are used by millions of visitors to discover its theme parks and attractions and to book visits. As part of its ambition to be a customer-centric, progressive, and efficient organization, Miral wanted its digital engagement to be as seamless as the guest experience across its various destinations. The websites and mobile app needed to inspire guests with personalized guidance and information, optimize online conversions, and maximize cross-selling. 

To achieve these goals, Miral required a platform that would enable it to deliver consistent and up-to-date content, drive out operational inefficiencies, test and personalize customer engagement strategies, and streamline booking experiences. Crucially, the digital transformation would need to be completed within strict deadlines to optimize revenues. Miral’s Yas Island website was delivered in just seven months, in time for 2022’s lucrative season. The launch of its SeaWorld Yas Island, Abu Dhabi website needed to align with the highly anticipated opening of its next-generation marine-life theme park early in 2023. 

Solution

Elevating CX with a centralized solution

Working with Sitecore partner Horizontal Digital, Miral centralized all its websites and app within a headless solution comprising Sitecore Experience Platform and Sitecore Experience Manager, facilitating collaboration across teams and a more consistent brand experience. Sitecore technology helped break down internal silos, enabling greater collaboration and operational efficiencies while delivering a unified digital presence.

Miral’s teams use Sitecore’s A/B testing, analytics, and reporting capabilities to shape decisions about Miral’s websites, marketing campaigns, and overall visitor experience. Sitecore’s data-driven insights are used to personalize customer interactions and optimize digital journeys, in turn delivering more engaging and relevant content.

The Miral websites powered by Sitecore span seven destinations, experiences, developments, and portfolios, from the overall Yas Island destination to Ferrari World, Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, Warner Bros World™ Abu Dhabi, Yas Waterworld Abu Dhabi, and the newly opened SeaWorld Yas Island, Abu Dhabi. The unique experiences at CLYMB™ Abu Dhabi and Qasr Al Watan, The Presidential Palace, are also part of the Miral operated portfolio. Miral’s business-to-business portal also leverages Sitecore to deliver a seamless experience for the company’s B2B partners for lead generation, partner management, the online B2B e-commerce journey, and reporting dashboards.

Outcome

Improved efficiencies, conversions, and revenue

Using Sitecore to centralize its websites and apps, Miral has increased efficiency with consistent content, functionality, and components across its sites. The intuitive Sitecore platform has also allowed Miral to transition website management in-house, achieving significant cost savings while enhancing control and business agility. Sitecore is also helping Miral to offer personalized promotions to customers around the globe, deliver intelligent search, and make sophisticated content recommendations. 

With fewer steps to complete a booking—reduced from 10 to just three at Yas Island—and the ability to book restaurants and attractions in the same session, Miral has increased cross-sales and customer basket size. These enhancements have contributed to increased conversion rates and more site traffic across all of Miral’s websites.

The SeaWorld Yas Island, Abu Dhabi website achieved the single biggest day of revenue in Miral’s history in its first week and drove the biggest purchase of online annual passes in a day. The Yas Island site reported a 550% increase in conversion rates and 200% year-on-year revenue growth, with visitor time spent on the site rising 300%, and new site visits surging 43%. 

Sitecore’s solution supports multiple languages, offers scalability and high performance, and easily handles peaks in traffic. With 50% faster go-to-market timelines, Miral was able to launch each of its new sites in accordance with its business deadlines, transform the booking journey, drive revenue growth, and elevate user engagement.

WHAT THEY SAID
At Miral, digital transformation is the key to creating hyper-personalized visitor experiences. By integrating digital ecosystems into our operations, we are creating truly unique and memorable experiences for all our guests, further positioning Yas Island as a top global destination for entertainment and leisure. With a headless Sitecore platform, we’ve streamlined booking and leveraged personalization to transform the user experience across our websites and mobile app, all within tight deadlines. These improvements have led to more site traffic, increased cross-sales, and higher conversion rates to boost our online revenues.

Raed Kuhail

Executive Director of Digital and Technology

Miral

Horizontal Digital

Horizontal Digital

We’re an experience-forward digital consultancy