How can the Holiday Inn brand marry its rich history with guests’ ever-evolving needs? And how can it successfully co-exist with sister brand Holiday Inn Express, which has an increasingly distinct product offering and guest profile?
These are two of the main questions Holiday Inn is attempting to address with its new Change Your View campaign, launched earlier this week with a TV spot titled “Changing Together.” The initiative represents the latest steps in the brand’s ongoing evolution, and Heather Balsley, SVP Americas for the Holiday Inn brand family, talked with HOTELS about the rationale behind the campaign as well as its short- and long-term goals.
HOTELS: How was the Change Your View campaign developed, and what was the main message Holiday Inn wanted to convey?
Heather Balsley: There are really two objectives behind this campaign, at least this initial launch of the campaign. First and foremost is our strategy to create clear differentiation between Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. We relaunched the Stay Smart campaign for Holiday Inn Express towards the beginning of this year, and it is a real focus for us in how we’re managing these brands, that we’re creating and reinforcing how and why these brands are distinct from one another, how the guest is distinct.
For Holiday Inn Express, the guest is all about efficiency, whereas with Holiday Inn, what we’ve learned in speaking with our guest is that they’re looking for a much more experiential hotel environment. These are people who thrive on personal connections. They’re family-first kind of people. Whether they’re traveling with their family or not, they’re always trying to strike that balance, and they’re looking for a hotel experience that allows them to do that effectively. What they love about Holiday Inn is that we find new ways every day to make them feel at ease and like family. It’s about that incredible service experience together with a great hotel stay. It’s that difference between the two brands that we’re trying to bring to life through these two distinct campaigns.
The second [objective] is about the Change Your View platform. We believe this will be a multi-year platform that will build from the message you see today, which is about driving reconsideration of the Holiday Inn brand, reintroducing it to guests who may know us, but may not know about the incredible change we’ve accomplished as a result of the relaunch. We will build from that through to the message around how we will ask guests to change their view of what travel can be, really honing in on what makes Holiday Inn distinct — this incredible service experience, this warmth and engagement that defines Holiday Inn.
HOTELS: What else will this campaign encompass beyond the TV spot?
Balsley: There’s definitely more to come. We are still developing exactly how we’ll bring the campaign to life in digital and social, but we will have more to share very soon.
This is just one step in what will be a multi-year journey. We intend to build from this to more specific proof points around what we’ve accomplished with the Holiday Inn brand. The investment behind the relaunch of more than US$1 billion was one of the largest in the hospitality industry. We removed 1,400 hotels and added another 1,900 since 2004, and our guests are noticing. We’ve won the J.D. Power award in our category three years in a row. We now have more than 20,000 guest reviews from U.S. and Canada stays on our IHG guest reviews website, and more than 70% of those are, on a scale of one to five, four or above. These are huge accomplishments that people just aren’t aware of. That’s really our first barrier to overcome with this campaign — making people aware of what Holiday Inn is today, driving that reconsideration and then building upon that platform.
HOTELS: Why debut the campaign with a TV spot, and what about the spot itself makes it especially effective?
Balsley: It came down to literally showing [guests] how our hotels have changed. The commercial was filmed in one of our best and brightest assets, in Clark, New Jersey, showcasing our new active lobby concept that is currently being tested. We want to bring to life all the different elements of the hotel stay that allows people to feel at ease but also have opportunities to connect, whether it’s connecting with their families when they’re traveling on leisure or connecting with people they’re traveling with on business, and to show those different stay occasions.
What I love about the ad is a bit of a nod to the past. This is a brand that has a storied history, and our guests love that history. They love that this brand was built on one man’s vision that was ultimately about bringing quality, consistency and approachability to the hospitality industry, and he was one of the first innovators in this industry. It’s that [history] that we wanted to have a nod to — and you see that in the opening frame of the commercial — but build from that to communicate about how the Holiday Inn brand continues to live that vision today.
HOTELS: Why is there such an emphasis on differentiation between Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express?
Balsley: For a couple reasons, and I’ll start with the guest. We’ve learned that the guest who loves Holiday Inn is very different from the guest who loves Holiday Inn Express. They have very different needs.
At their heart, the Holiday Inn Express guest, the bull’s-eye of our target, is somebody who really values self-sufficiency, and they’re looking for a hotel experience where they have a really efficient check-in, a great guestroom where they can be productive and get a great night’s sleep and then get breakfast and be out the door. It’s about enabling them on their journey.
Whereas the Holiday Inn guest — the core guest who truly loves the Holiday Inn brand — is much more about connections and being social, especially when they’re traveling on leisure, and making their family happy. So the hotel experience needs to bring that to life.
We’ve found that by having that clarity on who our guests are, what they need and what their behaviors are, it allows us to create an experience they’ll love versus just a watered-down, cookie-cutter experience.
[Differentiation] is also very important to us from a commercial perspective. Having distinct brands allows us to grow more quickly. It is our belief that when done right these distinct brands should live next door to each other. A guest who loves Holiday Inn will go one direction, and a guest who loves Holiday Inn Express will go another. That’s not to say there is not common equity. There absolutely is, but these brands have become entities in their own right.
HOTELS: Are the differences between Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express guests somewhat of a new phenomenon, or have those differences just grown stronger over time?
Balsley: Obviously these brands have a long history. When Holiday Inn Express launched, it was not with the belief that these were different guests, but the belief that there are just different occasions. But as Holiday Inn Express as a brand and this limited-service segment of the industry have grown, I think guests have changed. Certain guests have come to expect an experience that allows them to use the hotel as a bit of a base camp, and that guest is going to be happy in a very different environment than the Holiday Inn guest. So we’ve certainly evolved in our thinking as we’ve continued to learn more.
HOTELS: What are your main goals for the long-term results of the Change Your View campaign?
Balsley: This campaign is about driving reconsideration of this brand among people who may have tried us in the past but don’t know us today or the next generation of travelers who may have heard a little bit about Holiday Inn but haven’t yet experienced what we have to offer. We believe what Holiday Inn represents is precisely what millennials are looking for. They’re looking for a stronger brand. They’re looking for connection. They’re looking for great social spaces. And they, probably above any other generation, are striving toward this work-life balance that we know is at the heart of what we’re solving for with Holiday Inn.
It’s about that reconsideration, but ultimately as we build the story, it’s really about brand preference and brand love. How is Holiday Inn going to reclaim its leadership and unique role in the hospitality industry and really offer something different? That is about our physical product, but it’s also about our service model, and that’s how I think we’re going to win. This campaign is one part of our overall strategy to continue to revitalize this brand and to really change how people experience travel in this space going forward.