Since first opening its doors in 1940, Travelodge has built awareness around its strong west coast-focused footprint while expanding into markets throughout the United States. With over 330 properties and 75% of locations within an hour of national parks, Travelodge has a strong value proposition for guests—enabling them to reach new heights, new depths and everything in between.
Positioning itself as the “Basecamp for Adventure,” the brand has built a historic foundation for itself, bringing in active travelers, families and adventure-seekers from across the country. As an economy brand, Travelodge faces strong competition from hotels within its segment. So in 2019, Travelodge set out to capture the spirit of adventure through an ownable, digital and social media campaign: #Travelarge. #Travelarge is a movement inspired by the Travelodge brand. It’s about embracing all the journey has to offer, from the local trailheads to the local activities.
The goal of this campaign was to drive consideration and increase content engagement for Travelodge within the outdoor and adventure communities. To achieve this, we partnered with two established nature photographers, Becca Skinner and Glenn Lee Robinson, to highlight US National Parks and show how Travelodge is your basecamp for adventure in a series of short-form videos and photography.
The challenge was to captivate and stay relevant amongst a younger and growing generation of outdoor enthusiasts. While Travelodge is rich in brand history, there remains a need to shift perception amongst this segment to inspire travel and drive brand affinity and consideration for Travelodge.
Target Audience
Our target for the #Travelarge campaign was outdoor enthusiasts and national park travelers looking for a basecamp for their adventure- Everyone has their own sense of adventure. Whether you are casually exploring or bouncing off toward the great unknown, you need a base camp. A place you can relax after a day of exploration, where you can trade tales of your exciting discoveries with fellow travelers and comfortably rest up for the day ahead. Our travelers are hardworking individuals, who seek adventure and a break from the norm. They are savvy hotel shoppers, who value the proximity to the national parks and an economical price point that allows them to better enjoy experiences and local activities.
Research & Planning
We completed extensive consumer segmentations and profiles to determine consumer habits as they relate to travel and media consumption. We also took a look at our brand health to identify key demographics, and brand distinguishers. The key differentiator for Travelodge among its competitive set was the sense of adventure and relationship to national parks and their surrounding activities.
Through active social listening, Travelodge was able to identify relevant influencers, Becca Skinner and Glenn Lee Robinson, who both align with Travelodge values and have insider knowledge of national park travel. This provided exposure to additional relevant audiences, allowing Travelodge to build brand affinity with our targeted customer.
Key Message and Implementation
There is no other brand in the economy segment that can own national parks or adventure like Travelodge. With three-fourths of Travelodge’s within an hour of national parks, we are proud to be Your Basecamp for Adventure. We follow Glenn and Becca through their favorite National Park (Yosemite and Yellowstone) and the surrounding area (Angels Camp CA, and Gardiner MT) to spotlight national treasures/hidden gems, and to encourage a future generation of travelers.
In collaboration with our influencers, we set out to elevate the Travelodge brand through compelling storytelling via video and ephemeral content, all of which lived within our full funnel approach on digital (paid media and campaign landing pages), and social media (Facebook and Instagram). Our main storylines were supported with additional shorter-form videos, carousels and influencer photography (static placements). We also leveraged our campaign content in order to reach and garner new audiences for future retargeting. We ran a custom engagement unit via paid media in which users were required to watch video and interact with the photos in the unit to gather more meaningful interactions. This campaign ran from July through November on social media and October through November on digital channels, allowing us to further engage with our audiences towards the end of the summer into the shoulder travel season.
Using video and micro-content distributed across digital and social platforms, we created a movement that inspires audiences to #Travelarge and pursue accessible adventure, while driving consideration for Travelodge. The campaign shows that true insight, coupled with authentic and genuine content, drives performance.
Social Media (July-November)
#Travelarge reached 4.9 million users and garnered 8 million impressions on Facebook and Instagram. This in turn generated over 15,000 hotel bookings and a strong $43 ROAS. The engagement rate was 34% higher than the industry average (Rival IQ, Hotels & Resorts, Social Media Industry Benchmark, 2019).
Digital Media (October-November)
The campaign delivered over 166k impressions with an 80% video completion rate and 90% engagement rate consistently throughout the campaign flight, performing above benchmarks.
