#TwitterTalks Travel: How Marriott navigated the pandemic with Twitter

Disclaimer: The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Any marketer in the travel industry will tell you that the past two years have been a roller coaster. After all, a global pandemic that freezes not just international, but also domestic travel, is a challenge to navigate!

But travel is also a resilient industry, and we’ve seen the travel conversation on Twitter echo that resiliency throughout the pandemic. As the world opened, closed, and opened again over the past two years, people on Twitter seized those moments. For instance, from Summer 2020 to Summer 2021, we found a 28% increase in Tweets pertaining to travel that included the word “recommend,” as people got back into the swing of booking.¹ And we’ve also seen an interesting lift in Tweets related to exploration within the travel conversation,² suggesting that people have been quick to reemerge from the “hunker down” phase.

To learn more about what it’s been like to navigate the topsy turvy world of travel during a pandemic, we spoke with Nicolette Harper (@NewMediaMix), VP of Media at Marriott (@Marriott), who shared how the Marriott brand has executed a multi-phased comeback into the market as travelers hit the road again. 

No doubt the travel industry has been affected by the pandemic … but are there any trends you think will (and should) stick around?

When we think about longer term shifts and trends, travelers want more control over their trip experience. They want to be able to get updates on the app to be able to check into the room, order their food, book their spa appointments, etc., so we’ve invested in updates to the mobile app to accommodate these on-demand desires.

The other big shift we think will stay is around flexibility. Even the leisure customer wants to travel differently than they did pre-pandemic. They want to stay longer, they want to bring their pets, they want to work remotely, and have their family in the adjoining suite so they can split work time and family time.

For our part, we’ve embraced these shifts and have been designing messaging, media, and an on-property experience that really meets these travelers’ needs.

Part of this shift meant engaging your customers in a new way through marketing. Last summer, you relaunched the Bonvoy brand in a campaign all about travel inspiration. How did it all go down?

When we think about the impact the pandemic had, it’s worth noting that the impact on our business was worse than 9/11 and the Great Recession combined. Revenue per available room was down 90% at the height of the pandemic. So basically we started from scratch. We had a brand new type of customer who was traveling differently in the market, so we had to define a brand new marketing playbook for that type of traveler. 

And we couldn’t go out all at once. Different cities and countries were all at different phases with different kinds of restrictions on travel, so we had to be thoughtful and not tone-deaf on how we went to market. So we designed the playbook in phases:

Phase 1 was really around doing good and giving people hope. At the beginning, people weren’t traveling, and while we didn’t want to be tone-deaf, we did want to inspire that they would get back out there.

Phase 2 was around driving local business and building confidence in the market as certain parts of the country and world were starting to open up. We leveraged paid media and delivered targeted content based on who was traveling at this time.

Phase 3 focused on self-exploration, inspiring travel, and matching consumer needs and actions which were changing week by week. 

We knew it was the right time to go back into the market with these kinds of messages thanks to the tools, data, and technology we built in partnership with our media agencies. We built a dashboard with everything from covid cases, restrictions, vaccination rates, mobility data, and booking data to give us a “heat map” that told us when and how to really come back.

We also partnered with our team at Twitter more closely than we ever have before. Everything from conversation trend reporting to customer sentiment we pulled into the greater dashboard. This all helped us determine when and where we felt our big “Travel Makes Us” portfolio campaign needed to launch.

We love to see it! How else did Twitter play a role in your campaign?

Audience was a big factor in how we worked to weave in our marketing with Twitter and define its role in our mix. Since we went to market with the power of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio, we’ve started to bring back brand messaging based on the intent and behavior signals we see from travelers. We are reliant upon Twitter’s Conversation Trend insights for destinations and seasonal topics, trends, and we use these in real time to feed into our creative so that the messaging stays relevant. 

Another factor that’s been really important is the evolution of the Twitter product offering, especially the optimizations around Promoted Video. Frankly, Twitter is where things happen first – from news to culture – and for us, Twitter plays a critical role as a catalyst in going to market in a really big way. Products like Twitter Takeovers help us go out with a bang, and they also perform for us. 

When we look back on some of these initiatives, the video completion rate of some of those video products and the impression value they drove was higher than any other placement. And I think that’s why Twitter ascended to the top when we think about metrics like aided awareness.

The combination of the trends that you have, what’s happening on Twitter, the right message and the right product allows us to be really relevant in a timely manner.

What about when Marriott sponsors major cultural moments, how does Twitter play a role there?

For our current campaigns, alignment with our sponsorship campaigns within Courtyard (@CourtyardHotels) to date has been very strong. With Twitter, we’ve been able to be right within the content of the sports – specifically NCAA and NFL – that our audiences are consuming. We used Amplify – Twitter’s premium video offering – and Pre-Roll on the platform to deliver an awareness message, and to drive home the portfolio association between Marriott Bonvoy and the 30 unique brands behind the name.

Another interesting reason why sponsorships work so well on Twitter is that we are seeing people spending less time watching hours of content in a single viewing in the time that the show airs. 

These days, during big cultural events, people are watching the highlights later that night or the next day and getting their updates from Twitter vs. watching in real time. Twitter is this glue connecting streaming and connected TV with social media in a way that’s super relevant in the way people consume media. So I think Twitter plays an intersectional component of the marketing mix that shouldn’t be understated when marketers are thinking about Twitter’s role in the overall marketing strategy.

Looking to 2022, how are you thinking about the rest of the year?

We have a lot of things in the hopper! Some of it is really immersive, content storytelling, which I think Twitter will play a role in. We’ll also be heavier in the video space, and we’re thinking about how much we put into upfronts vs. other forms of content across social and video. I.e., what is the right balance, and how do those play together? That will be an evolution over time.

We also have a great amplification piece happening around Marriott and the gaming/metaverse space, which I think will play nicely on Twitter given its role as a place people come for culture.

Nicolette Harper (@NewMediaMix) is a recognized senior-level strategic marketing executive with proven ability to grow revenue and marketshare for enterprise companies such as; Microsoft, Verizon, Pinterest, UPS, Navistar, BOSCH, Dairy Queen, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, Subway and Wingstop. Nicolette is a leader in digital transformation, considered an authority in generating class-leading consumer pull within digital marketing, mobile marketing, social media and direct marketing. 

Chad Tully (@chadtully) is Twitter's Director of Travel, overseeing Twitter's travel vertical in the U.S., where he drives partnerships and revenue growth. Tully formerly served as Head of US Sales at Nextdoor and an Account Executive at Google.