Remote-controlled, camera-equipped drones raced through a newly renovated hotel interior and wrapped around its stunning oceanfront exterior to drive hotel and destination envy.

To highlight the grand re-opening of the newly-renovated W Fort Lauderdale, M Live partnered with professional drone racers to fly multiple unmanned aerial vehicles inside a fully functional hotel. Considering the value not just of the hotel’s structural elements but also the artwork hanging on the walls and sculpture spread throughout, the team skillfully navigated the interior to minimize the inherent risk of such an activation while maximizing excitement for guests attending the race.

The team carefully mapped the course, laying hundreds of meters of cable, identifying a multitude of obstacles and deploying half a dozen drones across 12 camera positions and spanning 24 stories to test and test again.

As the drones rocketed throughout the W Fort Lauderdale, the livestream showcased the hotel and guests on-property and viewers across the globe tuned-in to watch online.

The team created trackable room package codes featured throughout the livestream to generate customer awareness, consideration, and conversion. The codes linked back to the hotel's website, amplifying the viewer's experience by exposing them to deeper elements of the property like guest room imagery, restaurant and bar detail, and local area information.

The Drone Dash drove 6.9 million PR impressions, and reached 524,000 users on Facebook, with 118,000 livestream video views.

The W brand team, Americas continent team, and W Fort Lauderdale hotel captured compelling evergreen images and short-form video content to repurpose on their respective channels.

The success of this pioneering project is being cascaded to the U.S. field marketing organization and across brands as an innovative method of driving support for new hotel openings and renovations.