New Protea Hotels campaign showcases the fun in travel planning

Nicholas Barenblatt

Nicholas Barenblatt, the group marketing manager of Protea Hotels by Marriott and African Pride Hotels, explains: “Our previous promo venture involved the input of bloggers who wrote about their favourite spots and activities in their cities – Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town – for the summer period. The blogs were uploaded to the Protea Hotels website as part of our on-going content marketing campaigns. Based on the response to them, we know that people enjoyed hearing from influencers worth listening to, and they liked the fun elements of the blogs.”

Protea Hotels by Marriott is using content marketing to drive long-term customer engagement. “In the hospitality space, it’s often helpful information about an area or activities in the area that one can do when on holiday. Considering that research shows that people retain far more information if there’s a visual element, we’ve decided to do this in a different way with this campaign. Our approach involves visual content marketing and through the visuals, we also refer to other ways of communicating, like the popular use of WhatsApp messaging,” Barenblatt explains.

This time, the focus is on travel and taking a break, and we do this via three videos. “We focus, in the videos, on brief stories, each of which concentrates on a different theme that we know will resonate with our different audiences,” Barenblatt continues. The first video reflects the process of planning a holiday through the story of one young man who initiates the idea of taking a weekend break with friends. The excitement of planning a holiday – people discussing, sharing ideas - using social media and online tools, he communicates with friends, does the necessary research, gathers opinions from peers and fellow travellers and makes his bookings.

According to Barenblatt: “The story accurately reflects what we do in our daily lives – the use of apps and various sites to talk to one another on a one-on-one or on a group basis, for recommendations about accommodation. In social media, destination hashtags on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are useful.” The videos also reflect the shift towards people making their own reservations online via service providers’ websites, instead of using the more conventional booking services that hotels traditionally relied on.

“We take seriously what research shows us about how our target audiences want to be spoken to. It’s clear that video, coupled with social media, is a particularly powerful tool. So, our video campaign ties in with this. We’ll be maximising the impact by promoting the videos and engaging with the audience via social media,” Barenblatt concludes.