It is important to be where our consumers are and engage and deliver value when, where and how they wish to receive it. With the growth of the Instagram platform (gains one new user every second), and tapping into the insight that people love to share photos during their travels, this is a perfect platform for our brand to grow our presence. DoubleTree launched their Instagram account in April 2012 offering engaging content like sweepstakes. The sweepstakes themes were created to align with key time frames for the hotels like summer and holiday travel as well as create awareness for the DoubleTree by Hilton pet friendly hotels with a pet themed promotion. Instagram is a hub to extend our other initiatives like pictures from the road along the Little Things Project Tour, announce new hotel openings as well as feature hotel/city destinations. The integrated approach of using Instagram as another communication platform in our channel messaging mix to reach a new audience has helped us grow to over 1,000 followers in the first 5 months of launching the account. Holding sweepstakes that encourage interaction from our followers on Instagram helps increase engagement and follower count. A total of 90 new followers were gained from just the sweepstakes initiatives. The sweepstakes that we have run specific to this platform have achieved the following results: Sweepstakes entries: • #DoubleTreeSummer: 99 • #DoubleTreePet: 126 • #DoubleTreeHoliday: 63 Photos Tagged: • #DoubleTreeSummer: 227 • #DoubleTreePet: 660 • #DoubleTreeHoliday: 113 Total App Page Views: • #DoubleTreeSummer: 587 • #DoubleTreePet: 1,076 • #DoubleTreeHoliday: 1,163 New follower Increase: • #DoubleTreeSummer: 25 • #DoubleTreePet: 55 • #DoubleTreeHoliday: 10 Mentions on Twitter & Instagram: • #DoubleTreeSummer: over 325 • #DoubleTreePet: over 780 • #DoubleTreeHoliday: over 290
