Skift Take
Hyatt, like other travel brands, is going for a radical rethink of how hotels market and distribute their product. We'll watch closely to see how their plans shake out.
Editor's Note: Following our previous CEO interview series in online travel, hospitality, and destinations, Skift is launching a new series, this time focused on Chief Marketing Officers.
To better understand the big marketing challenges facing travel brands in an age when consumers are in control, Skift's What Keeps CMOs Up at Night will talk with the leading voices in global marketing from across all the industry's sectors.
These interviews with leaders of hotels, airlines, tourism boards, digital players, agents, tour operators and more will explore both shared and unique challenges they are facing, where they get insights, and how they best leverage digital insights to make smarter decisions.
This is the first interview in the series.
Hyatt Hotels launched its new Unbound Collection by Hyatt soft brand this morning (see separate Skift post) to reach a new consumer segment that wants an independent hotel with the benefits and rewards of a global chain.
Maryam Banikarim, Global CMO of Hyatt Hotels, says consumers across all travel sectors want that customizable journey where they can craft their own experience, while enjoying the security inherent in the Hyatt name.
Therefore, Hyatt's marketing must promise that same sense of freedom, promise of self-actualization, and degree of spontaneity — hence the new "Unbound" brand identity.
Today, hospitality marketers have a vast and continually growing wealth of digital platforms to better understand and engage their customer base. But Banikarim says it's important to develop integrated campaigns using a select number of strategic platforms, versus trying to leverage all of them.
She adds that new video and messaging platforms are going to dominate the hospitality marketer's mind in 2016, because videos and SMS work so well on mobile.
Banikarim is an advocate for both Facebook Live a
