Client Name	Client Domain	Client Location
Accor Hotels	Tourism	Asia Pacific

Project Overview:

Social Media Marketing for Accor Hotels, the global hospitality chain

The Accor group has over 4,000 hotels in 90 countries, and is recognized around the world for their excellent service quality. Accor Hotels includes some very globally famous brands like Sofitel, Pullman, MGallery, Novotel, Mercure, Ibis and All Seasons.

The Accor City Super Sale, organized by the Accor group of hotels, was a limited time special offer sale on APAC hotel rooms. The campaign was concentrated over a 7-day period in June ’09. Hotel rates in the Asia Pacific region were slashed in Accor’s new “City Super Sale”, and travellers could take advantage of savings of up to 60% if they booked online, for stays till September ’09. More than 250,000 room nights went on sale in 27 cities across 10 countries.

The Mission:

The client asked Pi Social Media to run a Social Media Marketing campaign to:

• Reach the widest audience possible, especially anyone with reason to travel in APAC region
• Spread the word about the “Up To 60% Savings” sale
• Drive targeted audience to the campaign microsite
• Ensure maximum hotel room nights bookings in the sale period
• Generate excitement for the “City Super Sale” to make it viral
• Position the campaign as an incredible sale from a high quality brand
• Create buzz using high traffic international blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook and micro-blogs

Action Taken:

The Pi Social Media team conducted the “City Super Sale” campaign mainly through the social media platforms Facebook and Twitter, and on well-known global travel blogs and forums, with particular focus on APAC blogs. In addition, other tools and methods used included social bookmarks on Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon, Blog Marketing, Press Releases, and email Campaigns. Unique tracking URLs were used to identify the best sources of traffic.

A number of other sophisticated Social Media Monitoring and Analysis tools were also used to measure metrics like daily traffic, positive/negative sentiment analysis, conversations tracking, etc.

Results:

The first “City Super Sale” was a great success. It also coincided with record-low air fares across the APAC region, allowing travelers to enjoy some of the world’s most exciting cities – including Bangkok, Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Hanoi, Mumbai, Sydney and Auckland – at bargain-basement prices. Ray Stone, Accor Asia Pacific’s Senior VP of Sales and Marketing, went on record calling it a “welcome respite to those wanting to get away or those traveling for business.” Accor has decided to continue with the sale annually, with the next Super Sale (2011) coming up shortly this year.