Hilton readies ‘connected story’ in latest Asia expansion push

“You need to think big, dream big and act big,” began Hilton president and CEO Chris Nassetta, conjuring the visionary words of company founder Conrad Hilton.  

Nassetta, along with the hospitality brand’s top regional and global leaders were in Bengaluru, India last month, where the Hilton hospitality company staged its first-ever brand showcase in Asia, an experiential journey for select media, vendors and guests to get a taste of how Hilton’s 24 distinct hotel brands cater to the wide range of travellers across the region by price point and experiences. 

While Conrad Hilton’s vision since 1919 has already yielded no less than 8,600 hotels in over 140 countries, employing 500,000 people worldwide, it’s clear that the company sees itself at the beginning of a new growth era, with much of the focus set to be on Asia.

Last September, Hilton unveiled plans to more than quadruple its luxury portfolio in Asia-Pacific to surpass 150 luxury hotels in the coming years in locations like Jaipur, Osaka, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Shanghai, Tokyo and Hanoi. Hilton has further vowed to double its mid-market range of Hilton Garden Inn and Hampton by Hilton properties in APAC to more than 1,000, with new openings slated in China, Thailand, Vietnam and India.  

At the Hilton brand showcase, Bengaluru, India

But it was the latter that had Nassetta most excited. “If you think about what’s been happening in the hospitality market in India over the last 20 years and you think about what will happen in the next 20 to 50, I do not believe there’s a market that has higher opportunity than India,” he told the media.  

While Hilton has been slower to expand in India than many of its rivals, the hotel firm is now doubling the number of its brands in India from five to 10, with Waldorf Astoria, Conrad, LXR, Signia by Hilton and Curio Collection by Hilton all set to make their debuts in the next few years. But the bigger growth will come from India’s rising middle class in the mid-market and premium economy segments with 150 Spark by HIlton hotels in India on the way as part of Hilton’s more modest goal to grow its presence tenfold, to 300+ hotels in the next 10 years. Nassetta, however, sees “much, much greater” potential to expand well beyond that. 

Marketing Hilton to modern Asian travellers

For a Hilton regional brand marketer, the job of marketing 24 different hotel brands and conveying their distinct benefits for select travellers and demographics across multiple markets isn’t easy to do. 

Hilton’s brand showcase, which explains its brands, mission and ethos, is a good start for those privileged to see it. But not all can. As Gretchen Moore, Hilton’s VP of marketing and loyalty, explains further in the interview below, Hilton’s communications rely heavily on its brand platform ‘For the Stay’ to tie-in the experiences of so many of its customers, brought to life by their campaign platform ‘It Matters Where You Stay’.

At the brand showcase in Bengaluru, Moore gave the audience a sneak peek of their latest campaign platform featuring Hilton brand ambassador and one of India’s top actors, Deepika Padukone, filmed in this same city where Padukone calls home.

Intended to speak to a new generation of busy Indian travellers who pack business, activities and leisure into their lives on the go, the film, released just this week, depicts Padukone’s momentary delight at having all her needs anticipated by Hilton staff to make her stay efficient and enjoyable. 

“We have been Deepika Padukone fans for a long time,” Moore revealed. “In a lot of ways, she embodies who our guests are. She’s bold, but grounded, yet still thinking about what is coming up next. So we thought: ‘Who better to collaborate with in a time where the world can often feel very transactional and functional. She has a warmth about her that helps us bring back what true hospitality really means.” 

Campaign sat down with Moore at the Hilton brand showcase in Bengaluru for an exclusive interview to discuss Hilton’s marketing strategy, including their latest campaign, and the brand's growth goals in Asia.

Gretchen Moore, VP Marketing & Brand Loyalty, APAC

Given Hilton's ambitious APAC expansion plans, what is your marketing strategy to support this growth?

We're not only excited about the scale (reaching 1,000 hotels in APAC ahead of schedule) and because we’re opening in new markets all the time, but also because of the new customer profile coming out of this region.   

For us, it's about crafting and calibrating our brands in these markets to customer expectations to build long-term connections. We’ve expanded [native] language use across our own channels and platforms to communicate to customers more easily and meet customers where they are. We’ve built out direct relationships on Line in Japan, WeChat in China and launched our Hilton enterprise account on WhatsApp here in India. Organically, customers have started a direct relationship with us on these channels to bypass doing their own travel research and have a more personalised experience, where we're able to curate stories around brands and destinations, for instance. 

To what extent are brand communications decisions made on a market-by-market basis versus going with a single universal message?

Our strategy is very consistent in that we are all about bringing 'The Stay’ to life, putting hospitality at the core of all our stories. Our brand personality and tone—warm and friendly that doesn't take itself too seriously—is something that's consistent across every market.  

But we want to be a brand anchored in culture, and that takes different shapes and forms in different markets.  We become a lot more specific and tailored, native to the channels on which we're communicating.  So, we spend a lot of time in social media, and our content feels a lot less staged and more organic to bring experiences in 'The Stay’ to life. So that is where our localisation comes in. 

Are local teams then responsible for creating this less staged, more organic content?

It’s a blend. We have teams in each of our markets being really thoughtful about what's driving travel behaviour in each marketsand the type of brands and portfolio of hotels we have in different spaces.  For example, we've got lots of Hiltons and full-service hotels in Japan where we've just had a Waldorf Astoria launch. So there, our content is all about a more premium experience. 

We're about to launch 14 hotels in Vietnam under our Tru brand and here in India we’re launching so many new brands at the moment. So those stories come to life in different ways. We really rely on our agency partners in each market because it's important to resonate in each market we're in. 

With India becoming a strong focus for Hilton’s expansion in Asia, you have a new campaign coming out with celebrity Deepika Padukone. How is this meant to connect with the Indian travellers you’re reaching out to?

In India, we've seen real energy and excitement come through our customer base, people who are making things happen for themselves, shaping the future of the market, and the rest of the world is taking notice. 

We always want to show up in a meaningful way that’s purposeful. We spent a lot of time thinking about the role that Hilton can play in that story in our campaign development. So the campaign is about how 'The Stay' becomes part of people's journey towards success, their willingness to exceed in all parts of their life and how ‘The Stay’ is not only an opportunity to help them, but is a beacon for when they reach that success. 

Deepika Padukone, our collaborator and celebrity partner in this market is just the perfect example of everything we care about as a brand and what our customers embody—the sense of being really driven and grounded, making sure they're always staying one step ahead. So it was really natural that we were telling that story with her, centered around how much she's got going on in her life and about how she just feels really supported by everything our team does when she stays with us.  

What lessons have you learned in working with different influencers and celebrities in India and APAC?

The partnership's got to feel really logical without asking customers to think too hard about why that collaboration is happening. It has to feel really authentic. How we do that, is by matching up what those celebrities stand for with the audiences and the customers that we're speaking to, and equally with us as a brand. If you can get that trifecta right, a lot of it comes naturally. 

We've been really encouraged as we've worked with Deepika as we do consistently everywhere in the world by bringing our brand to life with a human connection in the work. So with Deepika, it wasn't just about her success as an actor, but the work that she does to support women, to build her own beauty line, the fact that she's a businesswoman in her own right, that she has a family she cares about, her history with her dad, [the former number one world badminton player Prakash Padukone] and her self-made journey. All of that is ultimately what really shaped it for us. 

As a marketer, does it make your job harder to have so many different brands compared to one single Hilton brand? How do you support and tell the stories of each and every brand? At some point, is there a need to simplify?

The way we think about it is that different brands resonate with different customers at different points in their lives. It’s not just about ‘this’ type of customer is only connected to ‘this’ brand. We see our customers engage with many of our different brands across their lifetime and across different stay and travel occasions. 

Telling that connected story is how we wrap that up together. That is why across all of our brands, we are consistent in our platform around being Hilton ‘For the Stay’. That's in our DNA, the hospitality, service and who we are running through every single stay occasion across all of our brands. That’s what anchors everything together.  

So do you like to keep your main global campaigns for Hilton with supplemental activations for your other specialised traveller brands?

It’s a combination. Our key campaign platform communicating across all markets is: ‘It Matters Where You Stay’.  What you'll see is different brands show up under that depending on the opportunity or the story we're telling. So you may see Hampton by Hilton, you may see Waldorf Astoria. You'll see different brands all show up all under ‘It Matters Where You Stay’ because we've got that connective tissue through all of our brands. 

Many brands are moving more marketing communications in-house as AI simplifies content creation. Do you forsee changes with your agency partners going forward?    

We really rely on our agency partners as trusted collaborators.  

TBWA, our creative agency, for the last few years and has been a full partner for us. Their Singapore team, India team and in all of our Asia-Pacific markets really help us codify what ‘For this Stay’ means and how to balance a consistent message in a localised way that resonates.  

With Dentsu on media, we spend a lot of time understanding our customer segments not only for today, but tomorrow and the future, anticipating those needs and understanding what they are.  

I think we are a brand that will always augment those relationships as we move into different channels, different markets where we find the right partner to be able to support us in the job we're trying to do. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.