Work - MacDonald Hotels

As the UK’s largest independently owned hotel group, Macdonald Hotels & Resorts had already established a strong presence in the travel industry.

However, as part of its ongoing strategic development, the company wanted to position itself within the spa arena.

Many hotels claim to have in-house spa’s but the reality is that often they are little more than a few treatments rooms. Macdonald Hotels & Resorts wanted to educate the market on their full service spa offering and gain market share against its spa competitors.

To effectively communicate the group of 24 spa hotels to media and target audiences, we decided to that to generate interest we would officially launch ‘The Spa Collection’ as a new entity to leverage interest in the market.

Giving ‘The Spa Collection’ a collective name helped establish the spa hotels as a nationwide offering with a sophisticated feel.

To mark the launch we highlighted the £2.3million refurbished Macdonald Inchyra Hotel & Spa in Stirling as the flagship spa property. By introducing the media and consumers to the new spa we were able to educate target audiences on the Spa Collection offering and demonstrate Macdonald Hotels commitment to developing its spas. This has since been followed by the development of other properties including the Macdonald Craxton Wood Hotel.

To add to the nationwide message, we coordinated an exclusive media launch of The Paradise Escape signature treatment with product house Decleor. Journalists from the national press were invited to try the new treatment at a mutual venue in London but with the opportunity to offer the treatment to their readers all over the UK.

We continue to operate a proactive consumer campaign around the Macdonald Hotels Spa Collection building awareness on a national and regional level to benefit both spa break and spa day business.

Audience Reach 2015 > 160 million

The Macdonald Hotels Spa Collection has had widespread press coverage across national and regional glossies and newspapers both in print and online including Good HouseKeeping, Woman & Home, Top Sante, OK!, Stella Magazine and Telegraph.co.uk.