Spirit of Aloha Mobile Marketing Tour

BACKGROUND

Hawaii Tourism in Crisis:
Hawaii has experienced a number of recessions in the 50 years since statehood, but none quite as deep or far reaching as in the past two years. The consequences were deeply affecting the state’s economy and the profitability of our client Marriott Resorts Hawaii (MRH) which operates five hotels throughout the Hawaiian Islands. In 2008:
o Visitor arrivals to Hawaii dropped 10.4 percent
o Visitors expenditures plummeted $1.2 billion
o Statewide hotel occupancy dropped 6%
o By Jan 2009, the state had endured eleven consecutive months of double-digit tourism declines
o Marriott hotel revenue dropped dramatically
o Hundreds of Marriott-Hawaii associates were laid off or placed on reduced work schedules

Consumers were hunkered down fraught with uncertainty and it became clear that traditional brand marketing was not making a difference.

PLANNING – “If Mohamed won’t come to the mountain – the mountain must come to Mohamed”
Rather than wait for things to get better, the agency and MRH devised a plan to seize the business via a bold pro-active campaign that would blitz key U.S. markets with hand-to-hand in the trenches sales calls to agents and wholesalers while bombarding consumers with positive PR messages and images of Hawaii and Marriott. Call it “Combat Marketing.”

The campaign was christened “Marriott’s Spirit of Aloha Promotional Tour.” Quite simply, it was a media-hyped, buzz-generating bus-promotional tour delivering sunny Hawaiian smiles and Island-style aloha to retail agents, major wholesalers, media, and consumers. It began as a month-long eight city West Coast promotion – San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle – and was so successful that it was extended to include Minneapolis, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The bus tour lasted from January 12 to February 26 and traveled 6,775 miles cross-country. Aboard the bus was a rotation of Marriott hotel general managers and sales directors, a PR person from the agency and Hawaii entertainers.

Objectives:
o Heighten consumer awareness and demand for Hawaii and increase bookings for Marriott hotels
o Energize and excite travel agents and wholesalers booking leisure and meetings travel

Target Audiences:
o Travel agents and wholesalers
o “Avid traveler” consumers
o Media in tour cities
o Hawaii media
o Hawaii political community

EXECUTION – The Circus Comes to Town
The idea was to make a big impression everywhere we went. The bus itself would attract attention, as would live performances, sweepstakes, and television news and magazine show appearances. Key components managed by the agency were:

o Secured the 45-foot limo bus on the mainland and designed a wrap-around Hawaii beauty image for the bus making it a traveling billboard
o Recruited dancers and musicians from Polynesian Cultural Center (also our client) to travel with the tour
o Recruited Camile Velasco as our traveling spokesperson from Hawaii with the star power to get on TV and deliver the sales message while being entertaining. A former American Idol finalist, Camile was also launching a new Hawaiian music CD
o Organized Camile’s schedule of public appearances
o Arranged trip giveaways and sweepstakes for consumer events and during broadcast interviews
o Developed a schedule of TV, radio and print publicity
o Maintained a daily online “Tour Travel Diary” blog and utilized social media including Twitter, Flickr and YouTube
o Assigned agency staff to travel with the bus and coordinate with our team in Honolulu

Making a Splash in the Media
o Booked 24 appearances on radio and TV shows. Of special note:
o K-EARTH 101 Radio, Los Angeles
o KTLA-TV on CW, Los Angeles
o Star 101.3 Radio, San Francisco
o KGO-TV View From the Bay, San Francisco
o NBC5-TV Morning Show, Chicago
o Network Fox and Friends Morning Show on Fox News Channel, New York
o Network NBC-TV Weekend TODAY Show, New York
o CBS WUSA9-TV, Washington, D.C.
o Issued press releases to local, regional, city and trade press
o Engineered coverage in local Hawaii press - good for business, political and community relations

Scoring Political Points
o Helped recruit Mayor Hannemann of Honolulu for East Coast leg – he participated in media events and sales calls
o Mayor was impressed by Marriott’s “get up and go” attitude – singled out Marriott for praise in his annual state-of the city address; Governor also lauded Marriott for its efforts in speech to State Legislature
o Local Hawaii press coverage helped demonstrate to Hawaii politicians that private sector is doing its part to match state tourism spending
o The bus closed the tour with a visit to Hawaii’s congressional delegation in Washington D.C.

RESULTS – The Journey is the Reward
Public Relations:
o Interviews/appearances on 24 TV and radio stations
o Print Circulation: 474,945
o Print Impressions: 1,187,363
o Online Impressions: 122,780,091
o Online “Tour Travel Diary” blog
o 9,000 unique visitors
o Top referring sites include Google and MSNBC
o Broadcast Audience Reach: 11 million
o Ad Equivalency: $7 million

The Bottom Line
The mobile marketing promotion succeeded as Marriott Resort’s Hawaii’s own “economic stimulus” program. As a consequence of the success, a second bus tour was executed to Japan in November 2008 and a third tour to 12 U.S. cities in January 2010.