Valentine’s Day isn’t just an opportunity for hotels to build creative packages. Here are three recent content campaigns that used the holiday to spark online and social engagement.

Fill-in-the-Blank Romance

Tiffany’s “drop a hint” campaign saw great traction back in 2012 with its fill-in-the-blank, customizable e-cards. Hotels can use a similar idea without the complex site build-out by soliciting social followers to simply caption a well-designed fill-in-the-blank post (or share in a new post with a hashtag), rooted to what travelers enjoy most about the destination. For example: “I LOVE __________ about Kennebunkport.” Or “LOVE in Kennebunkport means ________ to me.” It’s a simple way to share great local picks and root your property to your destination, and awarding a prize like a one-night stay can drum up engagement.

Pinned Love

To generate some buzz for Opal Collection’s debut on Pinterest and cross-promote its collection of resorts up and down the East Coast, Hawthorn Creative developed the #OPALlovestorycontest. We tasked Opal’s audience with building a “tribute” Pinterest Board to their significant others, full of images that spoke to their relationship (like where they first met) and what they enjoy together (lazy Sunday mornings, hiking, etc.). Each entry was required to include one Pin of an Opal resort as the place they’d like to go with their significant other. The lucky winner, Ginny Dembek, got to do just that, and we then promoted and pushed out the contest and her story across all of Opal’s digital channels.

Video Shorts across Platforms

Valentine’s Day is a great way to get your audience engaged on social channels that support video and have your brand directly benefit.

It proved particularly fruitful for The Cavendish hotel in London when they launched a Vine video contest shortly after Vine’s debut. People were asked to submit their Vine video with the #ValentineVine hashtag on Twitter with the hotel promoting the contest on both Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps most impactful for The Cavendish was the novelty of Vine and the additional PR push the campaign then received. See the winning submission and one example of how this promotion caught fire here. Your goals will certainly be more modest, but tasking people to get creative with their smartphones and video under a theme – such as Valentine’s Day and “love” – is particularly timely. Like any good user-generated content, your results will multiply by how you share the best entries.