Luxury hospitality brand, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, opts for trade events and the power of art to promote its worldwide resorts to tourism professionals. Paola Bonfanti reports
The high-end luxury hotel market has grown crowded recently, making it extremely challenging for its players to cut through the competitive field. To make sure it stood out from the crowd, luxury hospitality brand, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, launched a highly creative marketing campaign targeting an international B2B audience, and used a trade travel and tourism event as its launching platform.
Eastern promise
Having expanded its network of hotel resorts worldwide, Fairmont aimed to increase the brand’s international reach and commissioned creative agency Gyro HSR to deliver the project.
The campaign, called ‘Be part of the next chapter’, launched at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) – a trade event aimed at tourism professionals, which took place in Dubai from 2-5 May.
In order to establish connections with the target audience and drive them to visit Fairmont’s stand at the show, a dedicated microsite –www.fairmontnextchapter.com was created. Here, web visitors were invited to enter a competition to win a luxury hotel holiday, after which they had to verify their entries at the company’s stand at the trade show. The action also enabled Fairmont to capture valuable data both on existing and potential customers.
Integration through art
The second challenge for Gyro consisted of creating a spectacular campaign that could cut through a highly competitive market and simultaneously reflect Fairmont’s values. To reach this objective the agency turned to art and chose world renowned paper artist, Su Blackwell, as its artistic partner. Blackwell’s creation, the ‘Art of Fairmont’ guest book sculpture, was then unveiled at Fairmont’s stand during ATM.
The sculpture was created out of the pages of a Fairmont guestbook. Featuring four hotels – Fairmont Peace Hotel, Shanghai; Fairmont Zimbali Lodge, South Africa; Makkah Clock Royal Tower, Saudi Arabia and The Savoy, London – it was designed to bring to life the resorts’ experience. In addition, the attention to detail, time and effort put into creating the piece, reflected Fairmont brand’s values and commitment to provide a high-end and customised service.
A three-minute film focussing on Blackwell’s sculpture was posted on the campaign microsite. Emails drove traffic to the microsite by highlighting both the competition and the unveiling of the sculpture at the trade show.
According to Fairmont, the response from the first deployment of the ‘Be part of the new chapter’ campaign has been extremely positive. Initial data on the outcome of the campaign has revealed over 20,000 visitors browsed the microsite and visited to the company’s stand at ATM.
Executive director at Fairmont’s international brand marketing, Paul Nelson, says, “We wanted to bring to life our brand values in a unique and innovative way. This campaign truly expresses the Fairmont Hotels & Resorts brand.” He adds, “The campaign communicates our positioning and how we differentiate our product from other luxury hotel brands.”
Future developments
The company intends to take the initiative further by next targeting the consumer market. Blackwell’s sculpture will now appear on display, along with the video, in the lobbies of some of its hotels.
