Sid Lee's Grand impression

Last year's B!G winner makes it two for two by adding a seductive tour to the MGM Grand website.

Challenge
The MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas is one of the largest and best-known hotels in the world. But competition is stiff in Sin City, with other hotels offering gimmicks including 109-storey observation towers, Venice-style canals and New York themes like Coney Island. How could the Grand stand apart from the crowd and achieve its goals of increasing offline and online reservations by 5% and the average room rate by 3%?

Insight
The team at Montreal's Sid Lee agency started with the fact that most people book their vacation destinations online. In fact, eMarketer.com found that online travel purchases increased by no less than 90% between 2000 and 2002 — a trend that has continued, with growth between 15 and 30% annually. Sid Lee decided that positioning the MGM Grand as a high-quality experience was the key to attracting more clients, and that they would have to be won over during pre-book online visits.

B!G idea
First, Sid Lee convinced MGM Grand to spend most of its marketing budget on a lavish online presentation with attractive hosts taking the viewer on a 90-second virtual journey around the hotel and its luxurious amenities, including entertainment, dining, spa facilities and, last but not least, accommodations.

Sid Lee figured that if MGM Grand offered the most compelling online enticements, potential customers would be more likely to book, and if they were convinced that it had the highest-quality amenities, they would be willing to pay a premium.

To drive consumers to the website, banners were posted on travel sites including destinationcoupons.com, tripadvisor.com, virtualtourist.com, yahootravel.com and fodors.com.

Impact
Over the past year, the MGM Grand saw an 8.8% increase in telephone reservations and an impressive 25% increase in online bookings. As well, the average daily room rate increased by 5%. On top of that, they saw increased spending on the hotel's entertainment offerings, not to mention international recognition for the site in the form of a Bronze Lion at Cannes and Best in Show at the Digital Marketing Awards.