Series By Marriott: Targeting the UK Audience

Marriott International has announced the launch of its new Series by Marriott brand. The rollout will focus on the UK and Italy, targeting the midscale hotel segment, allowing independent owners to maintain local identity while accessing the Marriott Bonvoy loyalty programme.

Per Hotel Owner, the expansion includes five properties in the United Kingdom through a partnership with Splendid Hospitality Group.

These hotels are situated in London locations, including Earls Court, Euston, and Kings Cross, and other regional sites.

In this article, we discover more about the audience who the Series by Marriott brands could appeal, diving specifically into the UK market.

This analysis draws on data from TelmarHelixa Discover, an audience intelligence solution that combines complex signals from search, social, and digital behavior to unlock timely and meaningful insights about audiences in just seconds.

Uncovering the demographics of Marriott Bonvoy followers

We started off by segmenting the data to followers of Marriott Bonvoy who had a confirmed interest in loyalty programmes. This data revealed that Females (1.09x), with an age-range of 55-69 (1.20x), and with a household income of £48,001 - £60,000 were most likely to be interested in the Series by Marriot offering.

Exploring the Segment

As we dove deeper into the segment, we decided to explore how Marriott could target this segment, what their preferred use of media is, key influencers and genre’s of interest. We then used the TelmarHelixa Affinity Index score to measure the likelihood of interest.

Observed consumer interests are expressed as the Affinity Index, which measures how the target audience you are analysing is different from the average adult.

• 0<Affinity<1: Audience is less interested in the item than the average American adult
• Affinity=1: Audience is as interested in the item as the average American adult
• Affinity>1: Audience is more interested in the item than the average American adult

Media Consumption

Across media genres, Newspapers (1.16x) was the clear winner, with the closest next best, media-other (1.07x) and magazines (1.05x). Breaking this down further, we explored the newspaper segment to discover the brands that had the greatest likelihood of the segment showing interest in them, with The Telegraph (1.25x), The Independent (1.24x) and The Guardian (1.21x) all performing strongly.

Topics of Interest and Influencers

Knowing how the audience consumes media is one thing, knowing what they are interested in, and who the conversation starters of influence are, is something else.

We saw significant reach into the audience segment for Chefs (59.85%) and Investment Influencers (46.37%) with the Affinity Index score for both at 1.05x and 1.09x respectively. Both of these elements could play strongly to the objestives of the Series by Marriott UK portfolio, focusing on functional design and grab-and-go food offerings for travellers seeking affordable, consistent accommodation.

Breaking this down further, we explored these interests another layer down to discover the influencers within both segments. Perhaps unsurprisingly, for those of us in the UK, Martin Lewis featured highly with a reach (28.42%) that was over 50% higher than Faisal Islam (11.42%). This was accompanied with an Affinity Index score of 1.11x, making Martin Lewis a strong voice in the market.

Chef-wise, Jamie Oliver (24.88%) and Nigella Lawson (15.45%) had good reach and rates of penetration into the segment, with audience Affinity Index Scores of 1.10x and 1.17x, respectively.

Bonus Insight

Outside of these core interests and influencers, Greta Thunberg also performed strongly, perhaps revealing an eco-concious side to the segment.

Summary

Regardless of how the Series by Marriott brand is promoted, there are clear insights that will help to get more out of media campaigns and investment, and connect the brand to the audience who are most likely to become guests of the hotels.