Hilton on how to get direct booking

According to Hilton Worldwide, 57 billion Hilton HHonors Points went unused in 2015 because guests booked through a third party, equating to more than 1.6 million free nights lost.

Geraldine Calpin, SVP and global head of marketing & digital at Hilton Worldwide, says the reason for that is because there’s such widespread belief among travel consumers that online travel agencies (OTAs) offer the lowest prices available in the digital marketplace.

Many other hotel brands have developed different types of marketing campaigns to educate consumers that booking directly on the brand.com websites provides the greatest value, with added benefits ranging from free Wi-Fi to free breakfast. Except, those promotions have often had minimal effect because consumer behavior is so entrenched in the OTA booking ecosystem.

So Hilton launched its largest global marketing campaign ever last month, called “Stop Clicking Around.” The initiative is designed to drive Hilton HHonors membership and change consumer perception by communicating as succinctly as possible that clicking around the web for the best hotel deal is a waste of time.

The central message emphasizes that Hilton is now offering a slight discount on room rates at all of its hotels globally, below those on the OTAs, for Hilton HHonors loyalty members.

The Rolling Stones’ iconic “Satisfaction” tune is the campaign theme song to help embed the campaign deeper in the consumer psyche. The Stop Clicking Around message is further supported with a clear listing of the automatic benefits for booking Hilton hotels at hilton.com.

That was the three-step strategy, especially designed to engage consumers on mobile: Tight tagline, famous song, simple list.

The first order of business for Hilton’s newly configured internal marketing machine was Stop Clicking Around.

Geraldine Calpin, SVP and Global Head of Marketing & Digital at Hilton Worldwide. on what makes this campaign different than others, and what trends she’s seeing in hospitality marketing in 2016.

Skift: What’s the elevator pitch for Stop Clicking Around?

Geraldine Calpin: First, we wanted to ensure that our customers knew that the best place to get the best rates was by booking direct. Number two, we wanted to announce that we had new benefits for being a member of our HHonors program, which are Wi-Fi, mobile check-in, digital room choice, mobile room key on occasion, and the always-on guaranteed discount. So if you’re a member, you get a lot of benefits. The concept of the campaign is based on the fact that there’s a lot of noise in the market, and people have a very short attention span across all advertising, so we had to make it a very simple, straight-forward, bold message.

We knew in order to get the message across in a big bold fashion, because we are Hilton and we want to be loud and proud, we needed to take a different approach. We needed a tagline that people wouldn’t forget. We had to have music that you can’t get out of your head. And we have research showing that we have a brand and guest benefits to offer that customers generally love. So that’s what we were aiming for, and that’s what I think we have achieved.