How Sykes Holiday Cottages grew visibility by 45% and reached their highest rankings YTD

Background

As holidaymaker expectations have become more digital-first, Sykes has evolved alongside them. The company has invested heavily in mobile technology and user experience to deliver a seamless search, booking, and stay-management experience.

The Sykes app is now a central touchpoint for customers, offering exclusive rewards, personalized content, and a more convenient, stress-free booking experience.

While many competitors still offer fragmented or outdated mobile experiences, the Sykes Holiday Cottages app has set a new benchmark for customer-focused innovation. It goes far beyond bookings—it fosters long-term relationships, encourages loyalty, and keeps its guests coming back.

And the impact is clear. App users now book an average of 1.22 times per year, compared to 1.11 times for web-only customers, demonstrating the app’s impact on lifetime value.

In 2025, the app continues to be a vital part of Sykes’ digital strategy—turning discovery into bookings, bookings into rebookings, and rebookings into lifelong memories.

👉 Download the Sykes Holiday Cottage App here

Challenge

Before partnering directly with AppTweak, Sykes relied on an external ASO agency that used AppTweak, alongside manual tracking and internal reports.

While this approach had reliably served Sykes for years, it meant insights arrived retrospectively through monthly summaries. This made it difficult to respond quickly to ranking changes, monitor competitors, or demonstrate the impact of ASO across the wider business.

With competitors launching apps for the first time and marketing activity scaling across channels, internal stakeholders needed clearer visibility into how the Sykes app was performing in the stores—and a way to integrate ASO more closely with their broader acquisition strategy. To drive sustainable growth, the team looked for an organic approach they could manage directly and adapt quickly.

Bringing ASO fully in-house with AppTweak offered several advantages:

• More accurate, actionable, and collaborative insights into the app’s performance
• Direct access to competitive intelligence
• Stronger alignment between organic and paid campaigns
• Reduced reliance on external agency turnaround
• Greater control and agility to act on insights immediately

The decision wasn’t about replacing the solid foundation the agency had created. It was about gaining the clarity, autonomy, and speed needed for Sykes’ next phase of growth.

In May 2025, Sykes began working directly with AppTweak’s Customer Success team to transition ASO ownership fully in-house.

Solution

Partnering with AppTweak allowed Sykes to reshape its ASO process around real-time insights, faster decision-making, and stronger alignment across the organization.

Aligning marketing campaigns

Using AppTweak’s keyword intelligence, the team identified high-value terms with strong organic potential and pay-per-click (PPC) relevance. This guided metadata updates—titles, subtitles, and keyword sets—and helped refine PPC targeting so both channels supported the same strategic priorities.

Sykes also aligned store messaging with its wider marketing and loyalty themes to ensure the app supported the broader customer journey.

Deep keyword and competitive analysis

Sykes gained full visibility into competitor launches, ranking changes, and category trends as they happened. This real-time data helped reassure stakeholders during a period of increased competition while allowing the team to adjust strategies quickly to maintain visibility and leadership.

Always-on monitoring and reporting

AppTweak’s reporting dashboards gave the team a clearer, more reliable framework for tracking performance. Live links and visual reports made it easier to share insights with stakeholders and demonstrate the impact of updates on business goals—something that had previously been difficult with manual reporting.

Cross-team alignment

Centralizing ASO data in AppTweak brought marketing, product, and leadership onto the same page. All teams could now access the same insights, understand the rationale behind changes, and make decisions grounded in shared context. This improved confidence and reduced ambiguity around the app’s performance.

Results

Within months of transitioning ASO in-house, Sykes delivered its strongest performance of the year.

• +45% visibility YoY on iOS, supported by more targeted keyword optimization
• Highest store rankings YTD, with gains across priority terms
• Significant cost savings after consolidating ASO work and tools
• More effective coordination between ASO and PPC, improving budget efficiency
• Clearer, faster reporting, making it easier to communicate ASO impact internally
• A strengthened data-driven culture, with teams regularly using AppTweak insights in planning and performance discussions

The shift to in-house ASO allowed Sykes to act on insights faster, adjust strategy with ease, and demonstrate the app’s contribution to business growth with greater confidence.

What’s next

Sykes plans to expand its ASO strategy into new markets and languages, guided by AppTweak’s keyword insights and competitor tracking. The team will continue aligning store messaging with major marketing and loyalty campaigns, ensuring the app remains a central, high-performing touchpoint across the customer journey.

Following the success of the consumer app, Sykes has also launched a dedicated Owner App, allowing property owners to manage bookings, performance, and guest messaging in real time. This full-circle ecosystem sets Sykes further apart in the holiday letting industry.