Peninsula Hotels Treads a Delicate Balance Marketing in Hyper-Critical Mediascape

25.08.2023 - 14:17 / skift.com / Carley Thornell

Success in luxury hotel marketing was a little more black and white before the world became more woke. That’s the reality facing The Peninsula Hotels, which last week launched its Peninsula Perspectives campaign. A review of three ads from the campaign — set in Hong Kong, Istanbul, and London — reveals the high bar for success facing all luxury brands in marketing in an evolving media era.

Peninsula received acclaim in the early 2000s for static ad campaigns like “Portraits of Peninsula.” Celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz was given free rein to capture the day-to-day of doormen, room attendants, and others, in a mesmerizing black and white shots.

Those campaigns included staff, such as the iconic Peninsula pageboys, bedecked in immaculate white uniforms and pillbox hats inspired by military uniforms of the Victorian Era, as they served requests of all kinds from the five-star hotel’s guests.

But social expectations have evolved since then — and so has the need for luxury hotel marketers to level up their game when it comes to storytelling.

Today, Hilton and several other hotel brands, such as Four Seasons and InterContinental Hotel Group, have spotlighted their talent as “heroes” on social platforms. Hotel New York, for example, focuses on a behind-the-scenes approach to social media. It introduces employees as they have fun on the job for “likes” from travelers as a recruitment mechanism for staffing. Virgin Hotels even programs its guest app Lucy with location-specific activity recommendations and walking maps curated by local staff.

As Peninsula celebrates 95 years and the opening of two hotels in 2023 (London and Istanbul) those two cities and the brand’s flagship location in Hong Kong are featured in a new campaign that the company released last week. “Peninsula Perspectives” includes print ads and the brand’s first video spots (20-second and 2-minute versions for each locale). 

This time, instead of featuring employees in hotel interiors performing typically unheralded day-to-day tasks, the polished spots feature talent exploring their cities and after-work extracurriculars.

Vice president and director of marketing and communications Carson Glover said the value of employees as “heroes” and “protagonists.”

“People travel to see new places and explore, broaden their horizons. We wanted to showcase more than our employees’ spirit and authenticity of who they are – what all of these cities have to offer came into play, and who better to do that than our employees?” Glover said. “People are looking to be inspired when they plan their travel, and we’re doing that by telling a story that isn’t your typical approach to marketing luxury hotels.” 

Glover is correct. Geographically and artistically,