Over the course of the pandemic, there has been a rise of national park visitation and an increased strain on park resources. Last year, over 237 million people visited America’s national parks, with 15 parks setting a new recreation visitation record. Travelodge by Wyndham has had an ongoing relationship with the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) for the past five years because it’s a perfect fit for the brand with over 75% of our hotels within an hour’s drive of a national park. In an effort to help protect these vital landmarks, the brand is proud to serve as an official sponsor of the NPCA and reinforce that Travelodge is your basecamp for adventure.
National Park Week is a chance to celebrate and show appreciation for our nation’s parks which has played a critical role in providing a safe and fulfilling escape for travelers and their families amid the pandemic. The marketing goals for National Park Week was as a superfecta:
To celebrate National Park Week, April 17-25, 2021, we awarded the first-ever $25,000 challenge grant to the NPCA reaffirming our commitment to protecting and preserving our nation’s parks while challenging others to help match the efforts with a smaller donation of their own. In tandem with the challenge grant, we announced a three-year renewal of our commitment to the NPCA along with National Park Week activities and a social campaign to co-promote the grant, encourage people to match our donation, as well as showcase national park insider guides and adventure responsibly tips.
The National Park Week social campaign successfully launched from April 16, 2021 with some content running throughout the summer months to September 30, 2021 across our website, email, and social media channels including Facebook and Instagram. Our social media content consisted of 3 co-branded social videos, a static post for the challenge grant and a static post for the Earth Day offer. The videos creatively showcased 10 tips to adventure responsibly while visiting national parks as well as promoting the NPCA’s National Park Insider Guides spotlighting Travelodge locations near specific national parks. In addition, the challenge grant post had a call-to-action to help us protect national parks by matching our donation with a smaller one of their own. We also wanted to encourage travel during this time and promoted our Earth Day promotion of Stay 2+ Nights, Save 20%.
Throughout campaign execution we had to stay in lockstep with the NPCA to gain approval on co-branded assets in a timely fashion. There was a lot of moving parts across not only our campaign assets, but assets across their website, social media, text-messaging, and a webinar Park Talk. Overall, our overarching strategy and tactical execution led to a very successful National Park Week campaign.
Our campaign had a full-funnel social approach with effectiveness and success measured by social impressions, video views, engagement, traffic, and bookings. The results of our campaign are as follows:
