Campaign Spotlight: Lodging Chain Offers ‘Room’ With a View

Lodging Chain Offers ‘Room’ With a View

A leader in the lodging category is introducing a campaign meant to portray its properties as more distinctive than those of a typical chain yet at the same time offering the kinds of amenities and services that customers expect from chains.

An ad from the new Loews Hotels & Resorts campaign.

The company is Loews Hotels and Resorts, part of the Loews Corporation, which is bringing out a campaign in print, digital and social media with a budget estimated at $4 million. The campaign carries the theme “The room you need.”

The double meaning of the theme expresses a central premise of the campaign: Loews offers “room,” in the sense of a place to rest your head at night, and room, in the sense of a respite from the kind of attention from the staff that some travelers perceive as overdone and old-fashioned.

The campaign is coming out at a time of year when consumers are flooded with ads for hotels, motels, resorts and inns. The timing reflects that, with so many consumers traveling each summer, lodging marketers seek to fish where the fish are â€" or where the fish are going to stay overnight.

Others that have introduced campaigns recently include the Holiday Inn Express division of the InterContinental Hotel Group, which brought back its “Stay smart” ads known for the punch line “But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night," and the Marriott Hotels and Resorts division of Marriott International with ads that carry the theme “Travel brilliantly.”

The creative part of the Loews Hotels and Resorts campaign is being handled by an agency named Catch New York. The digital part is being handled by TravelClick in New York. The social media aspects, including a presence on Facebook and Twitter, are being handled internally at Loews with assistance from TravelClick.

The campaign is the first for Loews Hotels and Resorts in more than three years, says Bruce Himelstein, chief marketing officer of the company, which is based in New York. The most recent previous ads carried the theme “Savor the journey.”

The new campaign is also the first since Mr. Himelstein joined Loews “a little over a year ago,” he adds, after serving in senior posts for companies in the hospitality and travel fields that included Oceania Cruises, Kerzner International and Ritz-Carlton.

Loews has 19 properties now open, with two hotels under construction, in Chicago and Orlando, Fla., and “more in the pipeline,” Mr. Himelstein says.

In conducting research among consumers about the company’s place in the market, “we found that they knew we weren’t an independent, a one-off,” he adds, “and they knew we weren’t a big chain.”

“It’s a pretty special positioning,” he adds. “We fall into a sweet spot in the middle.”

Consumers perceive Loews “as a ‘safe breakout,' ” Mr. Himelstein says: an alternative to both “the one-off hip hotels where maybe the D.J. is playing at a volume of 10 or 15 as you check in,” he adds, and the “big beige boxes” of the largest chains.

So the campaign seeks to portray staying at a Loews hotel or resort as “a unique experience,” Mr. Himelstein says, backed up by “this wonderful family legacy of hospitality called Loews.”

The goal is to “build to a point where we’re breaking through the clutter,” he adds. “It’s an exciting time to have this brand front and center.”

The initial print ads in the campaign show attractive men and women enjoying themselves at actual Loews properties. Their age range reflects a desire to reach “a slightly younger demographic” of 35 and up, Mr. Himelstein says.

In one ad, a woman wearing a knockout red dress is in her room, adjusting a strap on her shoe. “Before the red eye home, the red dress on the town,” the headline reads.

In a second ad, a man is jumping into a pool as a woman tries to avoid getting splashed. The headline reads: “Acting your age. Is truly overrated.”

In a third ad, a father and son are running with a kite on a path leading to or from a beach. The headline reads: “The annual meeting. Meets the daily escape.”

In a fourth ad, three stylish women are having sushi and cosmopolitans. “Hours to get ready,” the headline says. “Seconds to be noticed.”

Catch New York was selected by Loews in November after a review that, according to Mr. Himelstein, began with a lengthy list of agencies and was winnowed from “18 to 10 to 6 to 3” to, finally, the winner, which replaced Agency 212 in New York.

“We chose Catch because they’re scrappy, they’re young and they’re really creative,” Mr. Himelstein says.

Douglas Spitzer, partner and chief creative officer at Catch New York, recalls how keenly interested he and the other executives at the agency were in landing the Loews account.

“It’s a well-supported brand,” Mr. Spitzer says, and “an aggressive, hungry-to-grow brand.”