As the federal government closes U.S. borders to Europe, and President Donald Trump urges Americans to avoid traveling due to the spread of the coronavirus, the travel industry is facing unprecedented hardships. Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel brand, is expecting to furlough “tens of thousands” of employees as it sees hotels closing around the…
Advertisers have long leveraged the aspirational aspects of travel to sell vacations, with decades of shirtless sunbathers, cerulean oceans and glowing couples shot in soft light. Since the advent of third-party cookies, travel brands have been able to deliver this messaging through the digital advertising pipes that undergird the internet in ways that are both…
Even though hotel brands have gone all in on direct booking campaigns, online travel sites like Booking.com and Hotels.com continue to dominate paid search advertising, according to media research firm Kantar. Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 11, Kantar analyzed over 1,600 lodging-related Google search keywords like “las vegas hotels” and “nyc hotels” across desktop and…
As brands continue to explore the hospitality space by producing their own overnight experiences, hotel brands are still getting creative with how they engage their guests. Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants made photography the focus of its latest in-hotel experience as part of a new partnership with Fotografiska, a Swedish photography museum that recently opened its…
Hard Rock International’s first Super Bowl ad ever was as star-studded as expected. Directed by and (briefly) starring Michael Bay, the ad featured DJ Khaled as a masked bandit who steals Jennifer Lopez’s diamond-encrusted reusable cup. Lopez’s fianc?, Alex Rodriguez, also made an appearance, alongside Steven Van Zandt and Miami’s own Pitbull. The 60-second ad,…
After nearly 50 years of operating a multifaceted entertainment and hospitality brand with an ever-growing global presence in 76 countries, Hard Rock International will make its Super Bowl debut this year with a star-studded spot produced and directed by Michael Bay of Transformers, Bad Boys and Armageddon fame. Given that Super Bowl 2020 will be…
Booking.com is ringing in 2020 with a hotel experience themed around 20 popular New Year’s resolutions. The travel company will open Resolution Resort, a stayable experience in New York with 20 suites that each align with a resolution, such as being more active, reading more and practicing self-care. Beginning Monday, Jan. 13 consumers can reserve…
LAS VEGAS–Hong Kong is expected to see more travelers than any other city in the world in 2020, despite protests between democratic activists and supporters of mainland Chinese rule that have affected businesses in the international city. Peggy Fang Roe, a 16-year veteran of Marriott, has spent the last six years overseeing sales and marketing…
A feature-length piece about the history of Venice’s oldest Jewish ghetto (dating back to 1516) with a dollop of suggestions for modern visitors. A mini-profile on a mixologist, with an informative Q&A (apparently, the shape and size of an ice cube matters for your drink). A tips-and-tricks post on five places to go on the…
With a loyalty program that will soon reach 100 million guests, Hilton Worldwide is doubling down on its message to customers, asking them to skip the middleman and book their stays directly with hotels. Online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia and Hotels.com make up a sizable portion of the booking industry, and often have more…
Karin Timpone, Marriott’s global marketing officer, is stepping down at the end of 2019 to “pursue new opportunities,” the company announced on Wednesday. Timpone, who has been with Marriott since 2013 and was a 2017 Adweek Brand Genius and a 2016 Adweek 50 recipient, led the company’s marketing this year around its new Marriott Bonvoy…
The small bottles of toiletries know by leisure and business travelers alike are one step closer to becoming extinct as Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain, announced it will be replacing its miniatures with larger, pump-top dispensers by 2020. The move follows on the company’s quiet announcement last year–a footnote in its notice about…
That gong you just heard? You know it as the signature sound of Taco Bell from its commercials, but now it also summons guests to The Bell: A Taco Bell Hotel and Resort. The over-the-top experiential marketing experience is open for just four days in the desert east of Los Angeles, taking over a boutique…
When InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) announced last week it was getting rid of those ubiquitous mini bottles of toiletries from its roughly 843,000 rooms, Jack Read started getting emails. As the in-kind coordinator at Thrive DC, a nonprofit that supports Washington D.C.’s homeless community, Read is responsible for liaising between companies and individuals who want…
For brands and content creators, Facebook’s autoplay videos have become a mystical chalice bearing bountiful views—as long as you don’t mind your clips airing in silence.
Instead of expecting users to turn on audio (because who would?), more and more video creators are starting to create clips that work just fine without sound, usually thanks to subtitles or informative animations.
Now Hotels.com and agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky have created a video ad campaign that has some fun with the silence of autoplay.
In the best of the two new spots, we see spokesofficer Captain Obvious playing piano, though activating audio highlights the fact that what he’s really creating is a cacaughony of randomly pounded keys.
Check it out below (you can mute it yourself, if you’d like to recreate the news feed experience), along with another spot that uses a sign language interpreter to get across the brand’s message.
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What do you get when you bring together two of the world’s most interesting men? A hotel ad, apparently.
To promote the upcoming reveal of the first-ever Virgin Hotel, located in Chicago, iconic billionaire Richard Branson has created an ad that also features actor Jonathan Goldsmith, best known as Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World.
Of course, Branson never refers to his costar by his nom de meme, but the creative concept’s not too far off from the usual Dos Equis fare. Branson pontificates on rumors about his long-awaited, frequently delayed hotel launch, with mythical tidbits like, “The beds are so springy, they had to lift the ceilings 16 inches.”
It’s not the most cinematic or flawlessly performed ad. But for a one-city hotel promotion, it’s a pretty clever combination of two epic marketing personalities.
Starting Wednesday, the hotel will also be displaying similar “rumors” outside the building at 203 N. Wabash Ave. If you tweet a rumor of your own from the Virgin Hotels website, you could be entered to win a two-night stay at the hotel.
CREDITS
Client: Virgin
Agency: One Trick Pony
Executive Creative Director: Rob Reed
Creative Director: Bill Starkey
Account Management: Keith Pizer, Steve Snyder
Production Company: Virgin Produced
Director: Yarrow Kraner
Executive Producers: Huntley Ritter, Brian Skuletich
JWT Dubai teamed with FilmWorks and Psyop for this strange 80-second CGI-fest that shows travelers flocking to Atlantis The Palm, a luxury resort in Dubai. And they “flock” in the literal sense of the word, moving through the sky without even flapping their arms, to escape the gray chill of London and Moscow for a taste of sun-soaked, beachfront opulence.
This approach, though well realized from a technical standpoint and certainly memorable, might be a little too odd for its own good. At first, I thought the sky was filled with bees. Around the 30-second mark, we get a clear view of human beings aloft against the sun. They look like souls ascending to heaven, floating into the light … a notion that actually meshes with the tagline, “Check into another world.”
Of course, these people land alive and well at the hotel. The production team used acrobats fitted with special harnesses to make the scenes look realistic. Alas, some of the images serve the client poorly. Who wants to take a vacation in a place where people are constantly falling from the sky? (A stockbroker from Croydon could burst through the clouds and crush you at any moment.) And that hand skimming the surface of the sea is creepy.
Stop-motion artist PES, who's done a bunch of ads through the years, shot this amusing spot for the new citizenM Hotel in New York. It starts out all lovely-dovey between these two towel-swans, but doesn't quite end that way. The ad's title, "Swan Song," is apt.
In 2013, PES's "Fresh Guacamole" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. It's the shortest film ever nominated for an Oscar. Check out the rest of his work on his website.
Via Laughing Squid.
Halloween is always a good time for frightfully dark ad campaigns. And Wieden + Kennedy in Amsterdam has delivered one of the most gorgeously creepy efforts this year—a series of movie-style posters for Booking.com that dare you to stay at seven of the most haunted hotels in America. The properties, listed below, are all apparently inhabited by ghosts—and all get amazing hand-painted posters courtesy of renowned illustrator Akiko Stehrenberger.
• The Queen Anne Hotel in San Francisco
• The 1886 Crescent Hotel in Eureka Spring, Ark.
• The Gettysburg Hotel in Gettysburg, Pa.
• Hotel Galvez in Galveston, Texas
• The Historic National Hotel in Jamestown, Calif.
• The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo.
• The Vinoy Renaissance Hotel in St. Petersburg, Fla.
The posters will roll out in movie-theater lobbies across the country beginning Oct. 25. The copy at the bottom of each ad, designed like movie credits, is wonderfully written, too—see larger details of those blurbs, along with the full posters, below.
There's also a TV commercial focusing on the Queen Anne Hotel, where room 410 is supposedly haunted by Miss Mary Lake, the headmistress of a school that used to be housed at the property. An online partnership with Fandango extends the experience.
"From The Shining to Psycho, accommodations have played a key role in the cinematic history of horror," said W+K executive creative director Mark Bernath. "It was important for us that the work stay true to the genre and pay homage to the content and design that horror fans crave. It takes a really brave client to make a truly scary advertising campaign—one that I hope will be appreciated by a very specific audience who have already opted into having the daylights scared out of them."
A closer look at the "credits" sections of the posters:
CREDITS
Client: Booking.com
CMO: Paul Hennessy
Brand Director: Cort Cunningham
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Amsterdam
Executive Creative Directors: Mark Bernath, Eric Quennoy
Creative Directors: Zach Watkins, Gen Hoey
Art Director: Craig Williams
Copywriter: Zach Watkins
Head of Production: Erik Verheijen
Agency Producer: Elissa Singstock
Planner: Daisy Andrews
Group Account Director: Jordi Pont
Account Director: Courtney Trull
Account Manager: Alex Allcott
Art Buyer: Maud Klarenbeek
Digital Producer: Matthew Ravenhall
Project Manager: Jackie Barbour
Business Affairs: Justine Young
Media Buy: Wieden + Kennedy, New York
Production Company: Concrete Films
Director: Mark Bernath
Director of Photography: Maxime Alexandre
Producer: Hani Salim
Editing Company: Wieden + Kennedy
Editor: Julien Maingois
Audio Post: Grand Central Recording Studios
Sound Designer, Mixer: Raja Sehgal
Sound Design: Grand Central Recording Studios
Artist, Title: Raja Sehgal
Postproduction: MPC, Amsterdam
Flame: Lise Prud-Homme
Telecine: George K
Producer: Gerben Molenaar
Illustrator: Akiko Stehrenberger
Agent: Helene Polverelli, H Represents
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Cats get most of the Internet love, but bunnies can put on quite a show of devastating cuteness as well—as displayed in this new spot from BETC London for Ibis Hotels. The ad was filmed over two days in the Ibis London Blackfriars hotel, with 30 bunnies allowed to roam free in a top-floor hotel room. Supposedly the group snuggle on the bed was unprovoked. (Perhaps they cranked the A/C.) "We really wanted to highlight the ultimate comfort of the Sweet Bed by Ibis," says Neil Dawson, executive creative director, BETC London. "Bunnies snuggle up to each other and find cosy places to sleep. And what better evidence of the ultimate comfort of the Sweet Bed by Ibis than for the bunnies to seek out and sleep there on their own." Ornette Spenceley of Independent Films directed the spot. The music is a contemporary remake of "Hushabye Mountain" by Richard Hawley from the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Full credits below.
CREDITS
Client: Ibis Hotels
Marketing & Distribution Director, Accor (UK & Ireland): Karelle Lamouche
Marketing Manager, ibis, ibis Styles, ibis Budget at Accor (UK & Ireland): Lisa Belloni
Spot: "Bunny Bed"
Agency: BETC London
Executive Creative Director: Neil Dawson
Copywriter: Clive Pickering
Art Director: Ciara O'Meara
Producer: Olly Chapman
Strategy: Andrew Stirk
Account Director: Zoe Hinckley
Production Company: Independent
Director: Ornette Spenceley
Exec Producer: Matt Minor
Producer : Charlie Stanfield
Director of Photography: Niels Reedtz Johansen
Editing company : Final Cut
Editor: Ed Cheesman
Post-Production Company: The Mill
Sound Studio : Factory
Music : Hushabye Mountain by Richard Hawley
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