Ingham reveals: “I’m very keen to do What She Said here. It’s a new platform for us to allow very influential thought-leading women — generally from the worlds of fashion, design and music, aligned with the passions of the brand — to share their experience of being a successful woman in today’s world. Our plan is to have What She Said programming in different parts of the world — and I think it’s very relevant in the Middle East.”
Partnering with leaders in their field, Ingham says, has always been a focus for the brand. “W doesn’t really do traditional marketing. All of our marketing is based around collaborating with thought leaders to create experiences that our guests really engage with and love, and then we create digital content around those experiences so that our broader audience can see what we’re doing.”
Speaking of digital media, Ingham also highlights social media platforms such as Snapchat which the brand used successfully at the end of 2015. The brand activated a geo-filter campaign which mimicked traditional postcards including phrases such as “You Wish You Were Here” and rolled it out to Snapchat users who were at participating W Hotels while using the social media platform.
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He says: “We were the first travel brand in the world to launch a Snapchat campaign in the whole travel category and the first one to launch Snapchat geofilters. Snapchat said it was their most successful paid geo-filter ever across all categories — and it hit seven million people.”
Is this a reflection of the millennial mind-set and travellers, who, many reports say, are the ones hotels need to target? Ingham responds: “It is on our mind [but] we try not to be overly influenced by millennials. We look at it from the sense that W charts its own path and always has done. There are some macro trends in the way consumers think that are flowing from generation to generation… it doesn’t actually happen that there is a cut-off date from millennial to Gen X or millennial to Z.
“The beauty of W is that because each hotel is the next step in the brand, we are always evolving our marketing and our approach to positioning, so we never get to the point where we build something for a specific age group.”
He reveals that W has the highest proportion of the 25- to 35-year-old bracket of any Starwood brand. “So within all big, particularly luxury, hospitality brands, W has quite a young leaning — which is sometimes surprising because W is an expensive brand, from a price point of view.”
Ingham continues: “W sits alongside luxury not confined by it — because if you say W is a luxury brand it immediately brings up connotations of white gloves and silver, but we boldly colour outside the lines of luxury. We look at millennials as a source of inspiration for how consumers are thinking differently. But W’s consumer base can be anywhere from 25-55 — there’s definitely a young mind-set in our target audience. Whether they are actually a millennial or whether it’s someone who is approaching 50 and thinks like a millennial… that is where we play.”
Upcoming W Hotels in the region:
• W Amman Hotel: Opening March 2017
• W Dubai – The Palm: Opening March 2017
• W Abu Dhabi: Opening January 2018
• W Muscat: Opening January 2019
• W Marrakech: Opening June 2019
• W Sharm El Sheikh: Opening July 2020
* Data sourced from StarwoodHotels.com as of July 21
Bio: Anthony Ingham
Anthony Ingham is global brand leader for W Hotels Worldwide. Under Ingham’s guidance, W is on track to reach 60 hotels by 2018. Prior to this, he served as vice president, North America brand management for W Hotels, St. Regis Hotels & Resorts, The Luxury Collection and Le Méridien, where he oversaw the strategic direction of over 60 hotels and resorts. Prior to his move to New York to take on that role in 2013, Ingham oversaw the strategic and creative direction, guest experience, and overall performance of St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, W Hotels and Le Méridien in Starwood’s Europe, Africa and Middle East (EAME) division. Ingham joined Starwood in 2010 following tenure at InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), where he held a variety of sales, marketing and guest experience positions in the company’s global corporate offices in the UK, Australia and Asia.
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