Check Out of the Daily Grind with the Explore La Quinta Instant Win Promotion
La Quinta. Spanish for “I won!” Well, that’s not a direct translation, but La Quinta hotels’ new Instant Win Promotion just might be revamping your vocabulary. On July 31, the Dallas-based hotel chain launched an online-only interactive campaign that features an instant-win game to raise brand awareness.
Visitors to the site can register and play the game by clicking on a map of the US. When they select a state that contains La Quinta hotels, a text box appears with the number of La Quintas in that particular state, followed by a message informing the contestant whether or not they have won. They get three opportunities to click on a state and can return each day to try again. La Quinta is giving out five free night certificates daily for use at any of their hotels, with one vacation package each week that includes roundtrip airfare for two and a free, two-night stay at any La Quinta location.
Before visitors can try their random luck, they are taken on a Flash-based tour that highlights the brand amenities of the hotels, like high-speed internet access, free breakfast, and the Returns Club, which is La Quinta’s frequency marketing program. The tour also includes a tutorial of amenities on the LQ.com site itself, such as search functionality, an interactive map, and search by location.
“[It is] kind of a double approach on getting the customer engaged with the brand,” Ted Schweitzer, VP of E-commerce for La Quinta, tells ADOTAS. Once they know all about La Quinta and finish playing the game, visitors have the option to send a virtual postcard to a friend, telling them about the promotion and giving them the chance to go in and play as well.
While brand awareness is the principal objective behind the sweepstakes, that awareness is focused primarily on the size and scale of the La Quinta brand. “We recently increased the product distribution of our brand by about 70 hotels within the year,” Schweitzer explains. “So, it [the promotion] really was a good opportunity as a fun, playful, interactive way to show people on a map just how far-reaching La Quinta really is as a brand, as well as train them about the benefits of booking on LQ.com.”
As La Quinta comes off of its national Rand McNally ten dollar coupon giveaway, the new interactive promotion will bridge the timeframe between the hotels’ summer and fall campaigns. Schweitzer describes the setup of this particular campaign as “an opportunity to go into the online environment and just have a strictly online message that was really focusing on LQ.com as the choice booking channel for the hotels.”
In all of its Web-based campaigns La Quinta naturally addresses the standard hotel guest or “online-booker of travel,” but for this two-month promotion in particular, the chain also wants to target a portion of the online gaming demographic. “We’ve launched into a couple of different websites that we think will really speak or reach out to the online gamer, if you will…folks that have the high propensity to actually enter sweepstakes and/or play online games,” Schweitzer says.
Such sites to attract the wide range of instant-win fanatics include iWon, Sidestep, Nick Jr., Valueclick, AOL, Advertising.com, Black Planet, and Mi Gente. La Quinta has used similar games in past campaigns with the help of interactive promotion agency ePrize. Because of the continued success of the various engagements, Schweitzer feels certain that La Quinta will be introducing other promotional games into the future.
As La Quinta says, “Someone’s going to win. It might as well be you!” No need for translation there. Learn about La Quinta locations and win a free stay at
http://laquinta.eprize.net/explorelaquinta.
Reader Comments.
Interesting promotion and refreshing concept. It definitely engages the viewer. There is no doubt that such tricks increase brand awareness. As to the long-term viability of these campaigns in terms of ROI, that remains to be seen. Busy travelers don’t have time to play games, they want to book their trip in 1 or 2 clicks.
Dom Einhorn
Free Travel Podcasts
Hosted by Latin Supermodel Estelle Reyna
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