ABOUT

W Hotels built its reputation on late nights, loud music, and the kind of mornings you'd rather forget. But culture moves on. Today's traveller wants luxury with a pulse - sleek, elevated, and still a little playful. W had reinvented itself beautifully. The hotels looked better than ever. The only problem? Nobody knew.

Enter Hotel Tales. A curated film series brought to life by hand-picked influencers, each story unfolding inside a different W property across EMEA. Not advertising - storytelling. Not a campaign - an invitation. Come see what W has become. Then come write your own Hotel Tale.

BRIEF

Every great hotel has stories inside it. Our brief was simple: tell them.

We were tasked with expanding the global Hotel Tales platform across EMEA - elevating an existing creative framework into something that felt alive. The challenge wasn't to sell W Hotels. It was to make people feel them. To capture the luxurious, liberated spirit of a brand that had quietly transformed, and showcase the distinct design identity and personality of individual properties to an audience ready to be surprised by W’s transformation.

CREATIVE
We chose three creators. Gave them three hotels and one brief: live your own Hotel Tale.
Each influencer was handpicked for a passion the hotel could genuinely bring to life, then we got out of the way. Emma Winder checked into W Budapest and got all dressed up to find the hotel kept pulling her back in. Isaac Carew arrived in Florence hungry, and left having cooked shoulder-to-shoulder with chefs steeped in true Florentine craft. Adwa Bader checked into W Dubai. Mina Seyahi with writer's block, which the hotel helped her shift.

Each tale was cut into 15, 30 and 60-second films and released across social and on-site. Designed to stop the scroll and shift perception. Not polished ads. Intimate, character-led stories that invited our EMEA audience to see W differently.

Playful. Elevated. Unmistakably W. #YouHadToBeThere

RESULTS AND EFFECTIVENESS


Hotel Tales proved luxury travel content doesn’t have to choose between cinematic craft and performance. At a time when attention of luxury audiences is easily won but hard-fought to hold, the campaign succeeded in turning long-form branded storytelling into something people actively chose to watch.

Overall, we saw a 17% VTR on Meta Video Views, outperforming benchmark of 12%. UK BLS results show a 15.6% uplift on ad recall, almost double the benchmark. Meanwhile on YouTube, W Budapest’s episode achieved a 65.5% YouTube view-through rate across Germany and the UK, and Dubai delivered an exceptional 70% VTR in Saudi Arabia.

On social, talent-led reel content generated a 7.26% engagement rate, more than double the industry average for hospitality and luxury travel campaigns, demonstrating the power of culturally resonant storytelling.