Wingate Hotels Contest Searches for Best Travel Tips
Think you have a good travel trip? Then Wingate by Wyndham hotels wants to hear from you.
The brand, part of the Wyndham Worldwide family of hotels, is out with a contest seeking tips from business travelers for a chance to win a grand-prize trip to New York. People can submit descriptions of their tips (up to 500 characters) to http://www.wingatehotels.com through Aug. 31. So far, 922 tips have been submitted since the contest launched in late May.
Each month, the company will award one first-prize winner with two nights of hotel accommodations in New York, $2,500 for airfare and transportation costs, tickets to a New York Yankees game, concert or comedy show and meals. The top three monthly winners may also be featured in 30-second Wingate by Wyndham radio commercials, which will air nationally on the XM network.
Second-place winners will receive XM Pioneer Inno portable Satellite Radio service and third-place winners will each take home a TomTom global positioning system. Wingate by Wyndham’s marketing staff will review the travel tips for cleverness and appropriateness for business travel.
The hotel chain launched the promotion to promote its brand and to make the hectic nature of traveling a little easier, Kelly Yuppa, marketing specialist for Wingate by Wyndham Hotels, said.
“It’s a fun way to extend our brand,” Yuppa said.
Each week, the chain chooses a tip of the week from its entries and posts it on the site. The firm also notifies the author of the tip that he or she is close to becoming a monthly winner. This week’s tip says, “If you have to charge your cell phone while you sleep, place your cell phone in your purse or on top of your wallet while attached to charger and plugged into the outlet while charging. This way you will not leave your phone or charger in the hotel room. The number one item left in hotels is cell phone chargers.”
The brand is using the sweepstakes to collect e-mail address as part of its database for re-marketing purposes, said Edita Nudel, director of account services for Navigant Marketing, the agency that built the Web site and created the promotional pieces for the campaign. The campaign primarily targets business travelers, but also appeals to other guests.
“Business travelers are savvy,” Nudel said. “They know their way around. We think they can help each other with the tips.”
In a separate sweepstakes, visitors can also register to win weekly prizes of $50 gas cards through Aug. 31 by clicking on the $50 gas card graphic.
The firm is promoting the contest with spots on XM Radio through the end of August and on XMradio.com, PR efforts and online marketing, as well as print ads in Ink, Entrepreneur and Fortune Small Business magazines. The company is also sending e-mails to about 100,000 opt-in subscribers, Yuppa said.
