Marketing Objectives:
Clearly state your marketing goals.
What did your company strive to achieve using this piece or program?Primary marketing goals and objectives for Best Western’s BWR Chatbot were to: • Engage loyalty members and prospective members through an innovative and interactive channel, bringing them on-demand service at any hour • Allow members to link their BWR accounts and access personalized information including points totals and elite status • Act as a social listening tool for Best Western to better understand what questions customers frequently need answered • Increase BWR membership signups by providing a seamless signup process from the Messenger app to the Best Western Rewards website • Provide travelers with trip inspiration to encourage booking with their Best Western Rewards points • Keep users up to date on the brand’s latest seasonal promotions

Target Audience:
Who was/is the target audience?
Characterize the composition, size, and location of your target audience.The BWR Chatbot was built to provide a vast wealth of rewards information to more than 30 million BWR members and Best Western brand loyalists. The specific audiences targeted included: • Prospective BWR members active on Facebook Messenger • Digital-savvy millennials active on social media • Budget-minded travelers interested in loyalty redemption opportunities • The 1.3 billion users on Facebook Messenger • Existing BWR members interested in learning about their account status and BWR program benefits • Travelers looking for trip inspiration

Research, Planning, and Implementation:
What market research was conducted prior to planning the piece/campaign?After extensive research into what platform would best serve the BWR audience, Best Western landed on Facebook Messenger as the best fit for the customer support goals. Facebook Messenger has unparalleled reach, with upwards of two billion messages sent to businesses per month overall and more than 1.3 billion people using Messenger every month. The implementation and development is minimal and cost effective on Messenger, which made for a seamless launch and continues to provide an easy to update platform, an important quality needed for future skill enhancements. Since its launch in September 2018, the Best Western Rewards Chatbot has received more than 46,198 incoming messages from more than 7,000 unique users. Almost 16,000 engaged sessions illustrate the value of the easy access it provides to users. These numbers show massive adoption and consistent retention for user engagement.

Message:
What is the key message intended for the piece/campaign?
What differentiates your piece/campaign in the marketplace?The BWR Chatbot leverages artificial intelligence to provide quick and convenient communication to prospective BWR members about hotel amenities, BWR benefits, services and programs, current promotions, inspirational travel tips, redeeming points and an expansive number of general topics such as breakfast options, job inquiries and military discounts. The bot also allows users to link their BWR accounts to access personalized information including points totals and elite status. Messenger provides a seamless and familiar mobile environment where guests can connect with Best Western while on the go. As an intelligent platform, the BWR Chatbot serves as a social listening tool, collecting frequently asked guest questions to help better understand customer needs. The Bot continues to evolve and expand its knowledge base over time to accurately respond to these frequently asked questions.

Results:
How did you measure the effectiveness of your efforts and what direct and tangible results did you achieve? Please be as specific as possible and share the full impact of your efforts in CSR. Understandably, maintenance is another major part of CSR. If you have continued to actively and consistently work on your CSR process; please add those actions to your results description.

Results:
Which of your original goals did you achieve and how?
How did you measure the effectiveness of the piece or campaign? Entrants should provide quantifiable results of their tactics or campaigns.While chatbot usage overall is still growing for American users, Best Western found 40% of Millennials say they use a chatbot daily and more than 64% of users say that 24-hour service is the best feature of the service. The brand found strong success within the BWR Chatbot with the below results: 51,454 total incoming messages since its launch More than 8,000 total unique users More than 17,000 engaged sessions in which a user has sent a message to the BWR Chatbot

Research, Planning and Implementation
What research was conducted prior to planning the initiative? Describe the step by step efforts to plan and implement the initiative in a way that would allow others to be able to duplicate your efforts. Were their individuals or teams that offered leadership to ensure effectiveness?

Message and Communication
What were your key messages? How did you differentiate your messages? What was the purpose of the communications? How did you communicate your actions to the target audience? What other stakeholders or media did you approach for assistance?

Results and Impact
What results had the greatest impact on your target audience? What results were directly tied to the HSMAI Foundation Mission? Which of your original goals was achieved? Please comment on the process and the outcomes. What measures were used to determine success? How was the data collected? What is the status of the initiative now – will it continue? Was it effective? Will it be used continuously? Will you help others use the initiative to help the industry meet its needs for exceptional talent? How?

Message:
What is the key messages intended for the piece/ campaign?
What differentiates your piece/campaign in the marketplace?
What helped you breakthrough on mobile?

Results:
What original goals did you achieve and how?
How did you measure the effectiveness of the piece or campaign?
Entrants should provide quantifiable metrics tied to real business results (eg brand lift, leads, or bookings generated).

Project Analysis:
Please provide a brief background on the project and your efforts to preserve the destination’s natural, cultural and historic heritage.

Objectives and Goals:
What did organization set out to achieve in undertaking this project?

Creativity and Innovation:
What new and innovative ideas did you incorporate in either your method of outreach or in the implementation of the project that you think could inspire others committed to sustainability in the tourism and travel industry?

Communication:
How did you communicate your actions to the public, the media and other key stakeholders and what was the aim of the message?
How did you generate publicity in order to build awareness of, or support corporate values on your sustainability initiatives.

Results:
How did you measure the effectiveness of your efforts and what direct and tangible results did you achieve?

Leadership:
Please list the individual in a leadership role responsible for the project and how would you characterize their commitment to promoting preservation and sustainability best practices in the travel and tourism industry?

Entry TitleBest Western Rewards Chatbot

DivisionDigital Marketing

Sub-categoryDigital Single Item

CategoryMobile Marketing

Classification