Choice Hotels CMO talks the brand’s largest marketing campaign to date
Today, Choice Hotels International is launching the largest marketing campaign in its history, building on sustained momentum in brand growth to drive guest satisfaction and franchisee revenue.
The multichannel national campaign, titled “A Stay for Any You,” stars actor and writer Keegan-Michael Key as the character “Any You,” which portrays the various hats and personas travelers take on for different trips, from family vacations to couples’ getaways to business meetings.
The campaign’s premise is based on “a very real moment in the trip planning process where [guests] ask, ‘which me am I going to be on this trip?’” according to Choice. The campaign is meant to distinguish Choice Hotels’ brands, showcasing their individual value, and help guests determine which is the best fit for their travel budgets and needs.
Ahead of the campaign’s launch, Choice Hotels Chief Marketing Officer Noha Abdalla sat down with Hotel Dive to discuss the strategy behind the company’s largest marketing push to date as well as the results franchisees can expect to see from the advertising.
Choice Hotels CMO Noha Abdalla
The Campaign
The “A Stay for Any You” campaign will spotlight four Choice Hotels brands: Cambria Hotels, Radisson, Comfort Inn and Quality Inn.
Choice worked to execute the media buy with multinational advertising company Havas, and the campaign will run across broadcast, cable and streaming TV, SiriusXM, Spotify and social platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, as well as Key’s own social media handles. The broadcast ads were co-written by Key, his partner Elle Key and McKinney, Choice’s creative agency of record.
In one of the broadcast ads, provided to Hotel Dive by Choice Hotels and slated to go live later today, Key navigates various travel scenarios as “Any You.” As the character, he works to determine if the midscale Comfort Inn brand, which offers a “warm and welcoming family experience,” according to Choice, is the right fit for his needs, or if Radisson’s accommodations “geared toward business travel” are better suited.
“You could be a free hot breakfast hero at a Comfort hotel,” Key says in the video as he flips a waffle onto the plate of his character’s son. Or, he continues, you could be a “business big-leaguer,” he says, swiveling his chair around to answer a corporate phone call in a Radisson meetings room.
While guests travel for a variety of reasons, one universal need is to find a hotel that provides the right amenities at the right price in the right location, Abdalla said.
This is especially poignant in the current economic climate, as hotel guests want their money to “go a little bit farther,” she said. In some cases, this means allocating funds toward more experiences while traveling, rather than toward the accommodations, something she’s seeing more and more travelers do.
But that doesn’t mean their hotel stay doesn’t matter. Guests want to know the best hotel option for their own personal budgets and travel needs, and that’s why distinguishing Choice’s brands in the “A Stay for Any You” campaign is so important, Abdalla said.
“[There’s been] this realization that travel is going to continue to play a really important role in people’s lives, and that they are cost conscious and want to make sure that they’re being smart with their money, but also that they’re finding a hotel brand that meets their specific needs of that trip and it has the amenities that they want and that they prioritize,” she added.
Campaign objectives
There are three primary objectives of the campaign: drive Choice Hotels brand awareness, drive traffic to the Choice Hotels website and drive direct bookings. And there was strategy behind the selection of the brands featured in the campaign to help achieve those objectives, Abdalla said.
She told Hotel Dive that the Cambria and Radisson brands were selected in a concerted effort to change the perception around Choice Hotels’ segmentation. The company is typically thought of as a major player in the economy and midscale segments, but with the acquisition and integration of Radisson Americas and the national expansion of Cambria, Choice wants guests to be aware of its presence in the upscale space.
“This is an opportunity for us to help our guests understand the range and breadth of our portfolio and help shift their perception from thinking that Choice Hotels is more of a midscale hotel company to thinking Choice has a portfolio of hotel brands that has a stay that’s right for any version of them,” Abdalla said.
The campaign will also bring awareness to the growth milestones that legacy brands Comfort Inn and Quality Inn have had in the last year. In October, Choice opened the first Comfort hotel with the brand’s new Rise and Shine prototype — a product of a multiyear, $2.5 billion brand refresh. And Quality Inn saw significant pipeline growth in 2023.
The campaign, the largest by investment and scale that Choice Hotels has launched, also aims to drive traffic to the hotels’ websites and ultimately direct bookings through the sites or app, which results in profits for franchisees, Abdalla noted.
Direct bookings are “exactly what our franchisees are asking us for because those are more profitable to them,” she said.
“Franchisees are looking for us to keep our brands at top of mind with consumers, which is the awareness piece, drive more people to our website, so people can see what we have to offer, and also drive those lower cost bookings,” Abdalla said.
Beyond the campaign
Choice Hotels’ marketing strategy goes beyond the “A Stay for Any You” campaign.
“We have a marketing program that we call lower-funnel or acquisition marketing, and we have a number of partners, mostly in the digital channels, that allow us to be front and center in front of consumers when they’re thinking about making that travel decision,” Abdalla said. She said this could look like Choice ads showing up on a site like Tripadvisor while a consumer is trip planning to help drive additional bookings to Choice hotels. Additional tools include search engine marketing.
Choice Hotels also has a dedicated sales team working to drive group sales and group bookings, Abdalla shared. Industry-wide, group travel demand is increasing and is anticipated to drive performance growth in 2024.
Choice Hotels has several partnerships that help drive direct bookings and loyalty as well, including with AARP. Choice Privileges members can also earn or redeem points with hotel partners like Luxurious Preferred Hotels & Resorts, PENN Casinos & Resorts and BlueGreen Vacations.
