Serdar Kutucu

presentation recap

The Engaged Consumer

It’s been a very exciting year for Design Hotels™. Many new activities in the online and offline arenas have been created to amplify our strong engagement with the consumer. One of our major focuses this past year has been our launch campaign for the collaboration with SPG. We kicked off the communication with an event in London that alerted the media to the new partnership. We then brought this message to the industry itself at the ITB trade show in Berlin. Through ongoing activities throughout the year, including new rich content, movies, and images, we have detailed the collaboration and its many advantages to the consumer. This year, we further optimized the DS.com homepage to make it more emotionally engaging, to optimize usability, to be more inspirational, and to prepare the integration of the “Original Experiences” campaign. The result has seen higher traffic, a significant growth of our Community, and greater conversions. Additionally, we helped to position Design Hotels™ and all participating properties in the Starwood ecosystem. With these efforts, along with specialty programs, contests, and “SPG Moments,” we have been able to reach the right target group within the SPG members database, resulting in valuable revenue for participating hotels.

Our journey in engaging the consumer in different ways and through different networks continues with new ways of collaboration, such as our partnerships with Horizn Studios to create co-branded travel accessories and target the next-generation traveler, NeueHouse, where we launched a series of talks with Design Hotels Originals, architects, and designers, and Porter & Sail, an app-based destination guide that is beneficial for the consumer but also the hotel through profile information and enrichment.