Hilton’s Destination Marketing Team has won a top travel marketing award by using a Saudi family in its campaign.
The Badr family have a following of 11 million and were chosen by the hotel chain to front a global brand platform called ‘For The Stay’. It focuses on positioning ‘the stay’ experience as a key element of a guest’s travel plans.
The campaign won the Global Adrian Award (Silver and President’s) in the Advertiser – Influencer Marketing category.
It was the only Middle East and Africa (MEA) campaign to have been recognised by the awards, which are run by the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI).
Big numbers
The Hilton campaign achieved a combined impact of 173 million impressions through organic and paid channels.
On social media it generated 10.9 million views, resulting in 250,000 landing page visits across MEA.
The Badr family also generated additional value through organic channels with over 1,700 pieces of content, and Hilton gained an organic reach of 94 million people – generating an additional 146 million impressions across social media channels.
“The influencers proved to be a strong channel to connect with local GCC audiences particularly families, which in turn ignited their ability to showcase reasons to book a Hilton stay in an authentic way,” it said in its award submission.
Hilton’s regional marketing leads for the region are committed to ensuring that the brand continues to be localised and engages with the GCC audience.
A secondary goal was to grow Hilton’s local relevancy by creating region-specific content in Arabic, given the majority of Hilton’s campaigns tend to be Westernised.
“We identified that using a local, well-established influencer family with a large following would be the best channel for us to communicate our reasons to stay across the region and feature why we are the number one choice for families in MEA,” Hilton said.
The Badr Family are a hugely popular local influencer family with a strong Arabic following in the Middle East across their social media platforms.
The family of six were strategically selected based on their credibility with local audiences, and their content was amplified through a media plan on META and TikTok. Content was made more visually appealing through humour, engagement and interaction.
“The halo impact of a campaign like this allows us to have greater reach through more channels, making it extremely ROI-efficient compared to other tactics.”
