Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, Marriott lnternational’s most global brand, and a hospitality icon since 1937. A revitalisation of the Sheraton brand through a differentiated positioning and compelling proposition has been a top priority for Marriott International from the moment Sheraton joined the group in 2016.

In 2018, when the company announced its vision for Sheraton’s transformation to set the iconic brand on a new, successful path, Skift described it as “one of the biggest brand challenges in the hospitality industry.”

The company committed to a significant redevelopment and service innovation, followed by an introduction of Sheraton’s modernised logo redesign in 2019 to reinforce the brand’s position and vision for the future as ”The World’s Gathering Place.”

Marriott International also unveiled plans aimed at re-establishing the Sheraton brand across Europe with a series of refurbishments and exciting new openings.

To support the business and brand transformation in core European markets, our challenge was to reintroduce the iconic brand to our target audience and highlight the brand’s strong global credentials.

We set out the following objectives for our 2019 content and media partnership:

• Increase consideration of Sheraton Resorts & Hotels among the target audience of 35-50 year olds business and leisure travellers in the UK, France, Italy, and Germany.
• Highlight Sheraton’s strong global footprint through informative and engaging content that would tap into our audience’s professional and personal passions (business productivity and local experiences respectively).

We looked for a media partner with a strong creative concept that would feel authentic to Sheraton. It was a data-informed content strategy based on the blend of predictive audience analytics and editorial insights from Business Insider and Insider .

Here’s how the creative solution was researched and developed:

Insight:

• Business Insider had previously run a popular monthly column highlighting the best places to travel for each month of the year, so we knew there was a definite audience intent to consume curated travel recommendations. Moreover, the audience was 7x more likely than the average user to search for the content while planning travel.
• Audience segment analysis showed that 97% of the audience had a high propensity to seek out content focused on new and different local experiences.

Creative Concept:

• We developed a content ecosystem under the overarching theme of “Global Connections, Local Experiences”
• We anchored the partnership around an interactive showcase with clear utility value that would help our audience decide when and why to travel for business and leisure. “Around the World in 12 Months” combined 48 micro-pieces of thoroughly researched content focused on 48 destinations with multiple recommendations for unique experiences in the heart of local communities: from the Chopin recitals in Warsaw to the hikes across lunar-like landscapes of Costa Adeje.
• The elegantly designed user experience guided our audience from month to month, experience to experience, with a clear call to action to the best places to stay with Sheraton, right at the heart of the local communities where people gather and cities come to life.
• While our global selection span time zones from Sydney to Seattle, two-thirds of the content was dedicated to Sheraton’s European portfolio to support the business objective of driving consideration and purchase intent from target markets to flagship hotels and resorts in the region.

• To give more depth to the European story, we published four original articles focused on the destinations where Sheraton unveiled its signature openings of 2019: Tbilisi, Milan, Istanbul, and Warsaw .
• Our content manifesto was to stay true to Sheraton’s promise of making it easy for its guests to explore, relax, and enjoy the possibilities of travel across its many destinations where the brand has been the fabric of communities for over 80 years. So our globally focused, locally relevant content had to be easy to find, interact with, and share.

The partnership delivered 12.SM+ cross-platform impressions from September to November 2019 across our priority markets . Media and organic promotion saw 110K+ active users engage with the “Global Experience. Local Connections.” series, outperforming page views and dwell time benchmarks by 50% and 40% respectively.

Social channels generated millions of additional impressions and 4.SK+ social actions, with fans actively commenting on experiences and best times to visit the destination: “That’s 2020 sorted!”.

We partnered with Dynata to execute a brand lift study to deliver measurable, business-focused results to our client. The study’s objective was to gauge the effectiveness of the custom content, specifically among the high-value business traveller segment.

As the following results demonstrate, the campaign was highly effective at communicating the benefits of Sheraton hotels for business travellers , results showed an increased brand awareness and consideration.

1. Strong agreement with lower-funnel metrics
   Nearly 9 in 10 respondents had a more favorable opinion, with close to 70% considering a stay at a Sheraton hotel
2. Sheraton is a desirable brand for business travellers
   Over 80% of exposed respondents thought that Sheraton offered specific benefits to business travellers. 75% of respondents also had an established relationship with the Sheraton brand, agreeing that it was a brand for people like them and a brand that made them feel like they are part of a community.
3. Content with staying power and effective messaging
   Nearly 9 in 1O respondents in Sheraton’s target age demo liked the articles, and over 80% felt inspired to travel and stay at Sheraton hotels after reading the content
4. Sheraton’s globally established reputation
   With a deeply engaged audience on both Insider Inc. on-site and social platforms, Sheraton enjoyed high levels of aided awareness and familiarity and reported a directional lift in brand favourability

Markets

UK, France, Italy, Germany