It is hardly headlines when a hotel is up for renovation. In fact, most hotels hope no one notices until it’s time to reopen! When we were tasked to handle the communications for the re-opening and transformation of Mandarin Oriental, Singapore, we felt the iconic hotel, with a 36 year old legacy, deserved not just a grand opening, but a grand send-off before its long hiatus.

This work intentionally created an earned media moment for the luxury hotel, marking the occasion in culture in unforgettable way, while still keeping the brand top of mind as a leader in its category.

On March 8th, Mandarin Oriental, Singapore closed its doors for the first time in over two decades to embark on a huge, 6 months long renovation. In one way, that's a good thing: updated facilities, modernised design, a more welcoming and comfortable and luxurious establishment for guests.

But closing your doors for 6 months isn't great for any business in the service industry, and even worse for a hotel. Besides the 50% cut in expected revenue for the year, there's also the impact on the brand and overall awareness: it's 6 months the hotel would be away from the media and people's minds.

How could we solve this? Or at least minimise the impact on brand/business?

The most important pillar in hospitality is service. And true service is going above and beyond to ensure your guests always have the ultimate experience. Service is an attribute very dear to Mandarin Oriental, Singapore. So when they closed for renovation, we realised we had a unique opportunity to promote this obsession with service. After all, that’s the ultimate challenge: how do you show exceptional service, even when you’re not around? To prove we have our guests in mind, always, we decided to reach out to the second best options in town and invite them to take our guests while we were away. That’s it, a simple call to action for our competitors, in honour of our most precious assets: our guests. A genuine gesture that proved that to ensure our guests had the best possible service, we’d even go the lengths of asking our competitors to step in.

It is hardly headlines when a hotel is up for renovation. In fact, most hotels hope no one notices until it’s time to reopen! But we felt the iconic hotel deserved not just a grand opening, but a grand send-off before its long hiatus. We wanted to create an earned media moment for the hotel that would mark the occasion in culture in an unforgettable way, while still keeping the brand top of mind as a leader in its category.

True hospitality is not always something that you can sell. It needs to be inherent with the brand or service being offered. By casting the hotel’s GM next to his closest competitors all in the name of hospitality, this campaign speaks to Mandarin Oriental, Singapore’s true DNA of personal, exceptional hospitality.

More than that, it allowed us the possibility to reach an audience far greater than our social fans/followers.

We first released LTN on the MOSIN owned social media channels, followed by a ‘Letter to Editors’ that pitched the story across a broad media audience ranging from local mainstream media to trade media in marketing and travel/hospitality verticals. The campaign then took off organically by going viral.

The social media buzz escalated within hours, prompting responses from competitors. Our cheeky gesture fuelled extensive social buzz within the first 48 hours.

The climax to the campaign’s buzz came in a rare full page feature in Singapore’s leading and most read mainstream title, Channel News Asia, highlighting the clever strategy and response it ensued.

On LinkedIn, the C-suite community shared generous praise for the campaign with some of the world’s top global hotel group leaders applauding the spirit of camaraderie displayed by the Mandarin Oriental.

The idea cost a total of $0 in production as it was all executed by the agency team and had $0 in media investment. But that didn’t stop it from:

Getting over 20 Million impressions globally, worth US$200 Thousand

Featured extensively in Singapore’s No #1 media publication — Mediacorp’s Channel News Asia and in the CNA Luxury segment that has a collective readership of + 2.5 million daily readers

Featured in leading and highly circulated marketing & advertising titles across APAC and United Kingdom including Campaign UK, APAC and Marketing Interactive APAC with a collective readership of +6million

Reaching over 100 Thousand people on social

90% of which were non-followers (and therefore, considered new potential guests)

852% reach

8.1% new followers

105 Thousand views of our video

And a 100% positive sentiment for the campaign on social media it featured (IG + FB + YT)

And 100% positive response on LinkedIn from Executive C-suite community and competitors from global hotel groups.

Garnering not only great comments from our fans (and other hotels’ fans too)but also fantastic headlines from publications from the luxury, travel, and ad trade sectors:

“Mandarin Oriental’s charming campaign marks the start of six-month renovation.” - CNA Luxury

“A bold, sleek show of hospitality and service.” - Travel Weekly Asia

“Each letter carries content unique to Mandarin Oriental’s relationship with its recipient. Talk about effort.” - Must Share News (Singapore’s leading independent publication)