Case Study:
Benchmark Hospitality
Experiential marketing strategy wins customers – and awards
Benchmark Hospitality has embraced experiential destination marketing more fully than almost any other top hotel brand, winning several awards for their integrated digital marketing campaigns including a 2017 INDIE Award and HSMAI Adrian Awards in 2017 and 2018.
We’ve played a key role in Benchmark’s robust content marketing strategy, including producing their custom magazine, Mosaic, since 2011 and expanding to their destination website and other projects. Benchmark’s well-oiled content marketing machine is central to driving both leisure and corporate business across their global portfolio of more than 40 hotels, resorts, and conference centers.
“Working on Benchmark's Wanderlust Guides is like going on a mini-adventure. The content is filled with insights only a local would know. Each destination begs to be added to your bucket list.”
— Allison Cardello, Client Services Manager
The Journey to Success
01.
The Challenge
Benchmark’s marketing priority was to capture attention and new bookings by painting the scene for potential travelers – including corporate meeting planners – about the types of extraordinary and unrivaled experiences and service their destinations and properties offer. Just as important, they wanted to provide their on-site guests with inspiration and ideas to make the most of their stays.
02.
The Approach
We took a deep dive into Benchmark’s destinations and properties, weaving together stories and visuals that first inspire potential travelers to take notice of the destination, then look to Benchmark as the property that’s able to deliver the kind of experience they’ll treasure. The content is leveraged throughout social and email channels and in Benchmark’s magazine and multiple online blogs.
03.
The Outcome
Benchmark’s ability to offer authentic, inspirational content across their marketing ecosystem not only earned them several recent HSMAI awards but, more importantly, has brought more leisure and corporate business their way. Threading Benchmark’s brand identity throughout their marketing has established them as a distinctive collection in global travel and hospitality.
A custom magazine showcasing Benchmark destinations and properties
Benchmark’s brand reputation is built upon their blend of unrivaled destinations, luxurious properties, personalized service, and employees committed to delivering an exceptional guest experience – their mosaic. We write, design, and produce their annual print magazine, Mosaic, with those foundational elements in mind. From recommended itineraries and local celebrity profiles that capture the essence of destinations to culinary articles featuring the flavors and traditions of a region, Mosaic serves up content that gets guests thinking and dreaming about their next destination. The magazine’s gorgeous descriptions and images of sister Benchmark properties lead the reader to the places they’ll most want to stay.
Destination website content for each property
Happy with the results of Mosaic, Benchmark expanded their digital marketing efforts by tapping our content marketing team to create online guides for each of their hotels (Turtle Bay Resort in Oahu, for example). These Wanderlust Guides give leisure guests a full lay of the land for each hotel and destination. They live on property microsites and are fed by a series of user flows through Benchmarks’s global site, fully harnessing the power that content marketing has in SEO.
Applying content marketing to ever-important corporate business
After years of bringing leisure travel experiences to life in Benchmark destinations, we were asked to apply the same “under the surface” content expertise to the corporate groups business that’s so central to several Benchmark properties. The custom content library we built showcases Benchmark’s meetings capabilities for corporate meeting planners – beyond capacity charts and audiovisual specs – covering evergreen topics such as top off-site venues and novel team-building activities. Benchmark leverages this corporate content across the meetings guide section of their corporate site, their individual property microsites, and through their Benchmark Meetings blog.
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