Marketing Objectives:
Clearly state your marketing goals.
What did your company strive to achieve using this piece or program?The hotel reached out to Milestone to create a new vanity website and to redefine its market positioning while aligning their pricing to better suit the market. Another goal was to drive more direct bookings at lower cost. The hotel wanted a friendly site that not only showcased the beauty of the property, but also highlighted things to do near the area. They wanted to create experiences for their guests and inspire travel. The hotel sought to design a new branded website with the latest mobile first design and new content, incorporating its boutique personality while attracting new domestic and overseas guests. The client also wanted to run well optimized keyword rich campaigns to create a unified, holistic marketing acquisition plan. Milestone worked with the client to create target user personas that were leveraged to understand user intent and demographics. The Milestone team relied heavily on the user personas and customer goals to create target goals.

Target Audience:
Who was/is the target audience?
Characterize the composition, size, and location of your target audience.The hotel target audience is made up of leisure and international travelers. The persona is a more refined guest that knows what they want. This 5-star hotel is a prime wedding and meeting destination. The dining outlets are award-winning and have played host to notable meetings over the years from politicians and journalists to visiting dignitaries and local personalities.

Research, Planning, and Implementation:
What market research was conducted prior to planning the piece/campaign?Milestone created a new custom website based on a mobile first design that is easy to navigate across all platforms. The new site highlights hotel amenities like their spa and health club, rooms, and extensive meeting, wedding and event venues. The website also highlights local experiences in Dublin, and locally curated events by using an integrated, dynamic events calendar. Milestone also added things to do pages on the website to drive top of funnel awareness and better highlighted their amenities by creating a dining page that spotlighted their outlets. We updated the style of the content to better reflect the new brand. Our strategy focused on short tail keywords such as luxury hotels in Dublin, Historic Dublin hotel, to tap into niche markets and drive new customers to the hotel. Milestone also incorporated frequently asked questions (FAQ’s) to give travelers a clear indication of what the hotel and the neighboring area had to offer, slowly creating local authority.

Message:
What is the key message intended for the piece/campaign?
What differentiates your piece/campaign in the marketplace?A key objective was to proactively showcase the public areas and the lavishly appointed hotel rooms while communicating a feeling of coziness and great value for the location. The design speaks to the property and guest persona and showcases the flexible options provided via different buildings/zones of the property. We provided a new page to speak to team building and retreat group activities and features offered. The website design was a critical component, leveraging the fact that more than 60% of searches now happen on mobile devices. The new design focuses more on what the consumer will be able to do. Events, dining, and event and meeting pages were designed to drive leads including photo galleries and RFP forms. Overall, the messaging objective was two-fold: to establish the boutique nature of the hotel, and secondly to drive new audiences looking for a relaxing location in the heart of Ireland’s capital.

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.confidential section.

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 TitleThe Shelbourne – An Autograph Collection Hotel (Marriott Branded)

DivisionDigital Marketing

Sub-categoryDigital Single Item

CategoryWeb Site

Classification