Mark Weinstein, Hitron Hilton has strengthened its focus on the Indian market, signing Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone as its brand ambassador earlier this year. The brand plans to add multiple real estate properties to its portfolio in India this year and launch campaigns to further increase prominence and brand equity. Currently, Hilton has multiple brands in the Indian market, including Conrad Hotels & Resorts, Hilton Hotels & Resorts, DoubleTree by Hilton, Hilton Garden Inn and Hampton by Hilton, and also has plans to launch Waldorf Astoria and Curio in the market. While committed to creating demand and establishing a strong presence in the Indian hospitality market, Hilton is also taking major steps globally to enhance its technology capabilities to better engage with its customers and create more seamless journeys and experiences.
ETBrandEquity caught up with Mark Weinstein, Chief Marketing Officer, Hilton, to learn more about the brand's global marketing strategy, its positioning in the Indian market and creating content tailored for the Indian audience.
Continued below
Edited excerpt:
Q: What is Hilton’s global marketing strategy?
Mark: We are not in the tourism, travel, accommodation or lodging business. We are in the hospitality business, and our job is to provide the light and warmth of hospitality to our visitors. This basic philosophy established by our founder 100 years ago is also at the heart of our global marketing strategy.
Our competition is not with other hotel companies, but with customer complacency and apathy. Our goal is to be relevant enough to our customers that they will recommend our experience. The three pillars of our marketing strategy are creating relevant content, telling stories in an experiential format, and engaging with our customers on social platforms.
For Hilton, social media serves as a key platform for customer engagement, as customers from all walks of life use these platforms to discover and consume relevant content. We spend a lot of time creating content that taps into our customers' passions and maintains the cultural and social relevance of Hilton.
“In terms of experiences, Hilton is a long-standing partner of the McLaren F1 team, who travel extensively for races. We create a second home for them, bringing the experience to life for the team and their fans. We've also developed similar experiences for global celebrities with significant cultural relevance in different markets, including Deepika Padukone and Paris Hilton.”
Q: Content plays a key role in your marketing strategy, what is your overall content creation and marketing strategy?
Mark: Customers are willing to pay a premium for a great product, but they need to know what they're paying for. We have over 7,500 hotels worldwide and we put a lot of effort into structuring and attributing content for each hotel. At Hilton, we believe in being the best factual source of information about our hotels. We use a lot of text and rich content to describe what makes our hotels special, and make it all discoverable across our social platforms and our website, helping our customers find what they're looking for.
User-Generated Content (UGC) is another key area for us. There's nothing more authentic than our customers telling our stories. We create experiences that allow our customers to tell their stories, which are then discovered and spread with the support and love of influencers like Deepika Padukone, Paris Hilton, and more.
Finally, we also create long-form and short-form content for social media to inspire our guests and help them discover must-know facts about our hotels, which helps us to earn premium. For example, “Off the Menu” is a content series that showcases cultures, cities, cuisines, hotels and chefs through the lens of the Hilton story. It's a meaningful and authentic way to tell our story to the world, engage with our guests and inspire people for why they should travel.
Q: Hilton has over 7,500 properties around the world. How do you ensure your message is consistent across markets?
Mark: It starts with a clear understanding of our identity and purpose. When brands start telling a story that is not authentic to them, they are in trouble. We strive to have a consistent message across the world; a story about Hilton hospitality, great stays, and our ability to deliver that through great design, products, and leveraging technology. We might use different channels, talk about different brands of Hilton, or work with different creators and influencers in certain markets, but at its core it is tied to a common story. So whether it’s a 30-second TV spot or a billboard, it communicates clearly what Hilton and its brands offer to consumers. We have a centralized team that tells our story globally. At the same time, they work with local teams to localize the message so it resonates with customers.
Q: That's interesting. Every Hilton product has its own positioning, but how do you keep them from competing with each other?
Mark: Our research and insights show that most customers do not choose just one brand, but stay with a particular brand depending on the travel occasion. For example, a customer may like and love Conrad, but when they go to a tier 3 or tier 4 market, they choose Hilton Garden Inn or Hampton. We need to understand the commonalities and differences between each brand.
For example, the Hampton doesn't have a rooftop bar, but the Conrad does. We launched LivSmart for people looking to stay longer, whereas Graduate is closer to universities and colleges. Our new brand, Canopy, is a lifestyle brand.
We spend a lot of time studying the needs of our customers. We focus on gaps in the market because we want to serve every customer at every travel budget, which means we want to address more locations and more opportunities. Additionally, as opportunities unfold in different regions, we launch new brands to cater to them.
All our brands have clearly defined positioning, customer base, brand messaging and attributes driven by the power of Hilton.
Q: So what role do cultural nuances play when crafting stories for local markets?
Mark: Today, brands have to be extremely global and local at the same time. Our local story is two-fold. First, how do we present our content and make it authentic in a specific market? Second, we focus on creating a product that's right for the market.
For example, weddings are a big theme in the Indian market. We use that as a lens to tell the same stories we tell globally, but in a way that's more relevant to our Indian audience. Our Wedding Diary program showcases Hilton's wedding capabilities, which stays true to who we are, but also meets the requirements of the Indian market, so we blend both the content and product aspects with a local feel.
Q: What are your thoughts on the Indian market?
Mark: The US is our largest market by volume. However, India has a huge opportunity and we expect it to become our second largest lodging market in the near future. The US has 5.7 million branded hotel rooms serving 341 million overnight guests, while India has 1.7 million branded hotel rooms serving 1.4 billion overnight guests.
We are increasing our investments in India and have a multi-year roadmap for the market. We plan to open 75 more hotels in India by 2026. It is our commitment to ensure that the demand we create is not just for the future but one that builds brand equity, memorability and salience. Currently, there are five Hilton brands in the Indian market and this will increase to seven in the near future.
On the media side, we plan to put more emphasis on OOH and social media content. We have a leading performance engine that is always running to optimize efficiency and convert demand. We are also working with distribution partners, airlines and online travel agencies (OTAs) to drive more customer impressions at the moment of conversion.
Q: Earlier this year, you signed Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone as your global brand ambassador. What was the basis for this choice?
Mark: We are looking for people who want to build an authentic community and have a story to share. During our research, we were looking for someone who could authentically tell their story of traveling from India to the world. Deepika Padukone was the obvious choice. Her community overlaps with our target demographic and we are confident that she would benefit from our product.
She is a working professional and soon to be working mother. People relate to her on many levels as they juggle different things in life. She has around 80 million followers on Instagram and is a self-made influencer in this market. We relate to her authenticity and strength and believe she will help us spread our content far and wide.
Q: Marketing has evolved over the last few years to incorporate data and technology. How is Hilton on this journey?
Mark: During the pandemic, we began making major investments in our martech stack to enable new capabilities to engage customers. This was a great opportunity to power ourselves for the future.
We now have an in-hotel messaging platform called Kipsu where guests can send us a message whenever they want to talk to us. We now have all our guests in one place, including not only Honors members but also guests who have stayed with us once or twice.
Our Martech infrastructure and capabilities allow us to engage with our customers based on their preferences. The customer journey starts by watching our content on YouTube and learning about our services. They visit our website or interact with us on WhatsApp and book the right product accordingly while our hotel team supports their needs on-premises. The journey ends on social media where our customers tell their authentic story. This data helps us personalize our services and extra features for our customers. For example, if they are a family, we will introduce them to connected room content. If they are getting married, we will introduce them to the places they can go and the types of rooms they can book.
Q. Finally, how does a loyalty program help increase brand awareness?
Mark: With approximately 190 million members, the Hilton Honors program is the fastest growing loyalty program in the world. 80,000 new members join Hilton Honors every day. Our ability to personalize the customer experience plays a key role in the program's growth.
It offers a high-value proposition from day one and makes it easy for customers to participate. Customers get new experiences like better prices, access to concerts or McLaren F1 races, and room upgrades. Hilton Honors aims to turn the least frequent travelers into the most valuable travelers on the planet.
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Published on Jun 10, 2024 07:03 AM IST
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