Travel & Hospitality Digital Opps: Extended Stay rebrands, launches new brand (Score 50)

Extended Stay (ES) announced it is rebranding its core hotels as Extended Stay America Suites and launching a new brand called Premier Suites, per its recent Q4 2020 earnings report. It is also launching a redesigned website this month that execs described as its "primary digital marketing platform." It believes this website will bring additional traffic which will lead to more room bookings. ES also plans to use technology to improve its digital marketing capabilities. 

According to Pathmatics, ES earned 83m impressions through desktop video ads (51%), desktop display ads (26%), Facebook ads (13%), Instagram ads (8%) and mobile display ads (1%). It placed the majority (72%) of these ads site direct onto sites such as youtube.com, facebook.com, instagram.com, usatoday.com and sports.yahoo.com. It placed the remainder (28%) through a variety of indirect channels onto sites such as imbd.com, listenonrepeat.com, amazon.com, reddit.com and rawstory.com. It spent around $536.1k on digital display ads YTD, a 26% decrease from $675.9k spent during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend equaled $7.2m in 2020, a significant increase from $2.9m in 2019. 

Sellers-- ES's YTD spend is down compared to the same time period of 2020, but it drastically increased spend in 2020. It seems poised to continue advertising at this level, especially as it promotes the rebrand and new Premier Suites brand. It is likely targeting a slightly older and more professional audience (Gen-X & millennial men) now that is has added Suites to its name. Keep in mind, it will do a lot of marketing through its website and loyalty program, so it may not need to spend as much on advertising as it did last year. I recommend focusing your pitches on providing a high ROI. 

Agency & martech readers-- I believe ES has an in-house team taking care of creative duties and Mediahub Global servicing media buying and planning. There are no normal signs pointing to a review; however, there is a chance you could pick up some project-based work to help the company rebrand or launch Premier Suites.