With travel spaces getting more cramped every year (i.e. airplane leg room), it became the Hilton Suites Brands' mission to "Stand Up For Space", giving guests the freedom and space to bring the things they want. Only problem is, 70% of travelers don't know every room at Embassy Suites, Homewood Suites and Home2 Suites is a spacious suite. So, for our 2018 Facebook promotions, our goal was to create buzz-worthy experiences that demonstrated our key amenity in a breakthrough and engaging way. Something that didn't simply elicit entries, but showed off our massive hotel rooms in the process.
The Hilton Suites Brands–Embassy Suites, Homewood Suites and Home2 Suites–have made it their purpose to democratize the hotel suite. No longer are suites reserved for special occasions and the elite because, let's face it, everyone could use more space when they travel. Since most travelers don't know every room we offer is a suite, our number one goal was to increase awareness of our unique offering. So, for our 2018 social promotions, we were challenged to generate contest participation by highlighting our space in a fun, memorable way.
Our solution was to gamify Facebook 360 and create "Guess How Spacious", a contest that uses 360° video to recreate the classic "guess how many gumballs" game on social media. We filled each of our brand suites with an obscene amount of playful, seasonally relevant objects and asked Facebook users to guess how many for the chance to win a free weekend stay.
We kicked it off with our most family-friendly brand, Embassy Suites, filling a suite with 1,827 backpacks in September for back-to-school. Next, we packed 1,695 pumpkins in a Home2 Suites room for a fun Halloween tie-in. Last but not least, we crammed a Homewood Suites room with 3,522 stuffed turkeys as an ode to Thanksgiving and the brand's partnership with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Not only did 360° achieve the goal of getting viewers to interact with and explore our hotel space, it gave people a reason to stay and play around longer.
The three videos garnered 7.7MM impressions, 42.6% higher than the previous year's, 1.9MM engagements and 1.88MM video views. They also had a CPM of $8.82, +5.9% more efficient than 2017's social contests.
