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.
"Guess How Spacious" is a contest that uses 360° video to recreate the classic "guess how many gumballs" game on a digital platform–Facebook. We filled each of our brand suites with an obscene amount of seasonally relevant objects and asked Facebook users to count them and post their guess in the comments for the chance to win a free weekend stay.
For Embassy Suites–our most family-friendly brand–we filled a suite with 1,827 backpacks in September, tying it to back-to-school. Our Homewood Suites room contained 3,522 stuffed turkeys, an ode to Thanksgiving and the brand's partnership with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Finally, we packed 1,695 pumpkins in a Home2 Suites room for a fun Halloween tie-in.
Prior to this project, the Hilton Suites Brands had never worked with 360° video on social. Not only did 360° give our audience a reason to view every square inch of space in the suite, it encouraged participants to stick around and engage with the contest 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.
