Wonder

Log in

Research Outline

Prepared for Andrea F. | Delivered June 15, 2020

Hospitality Internal Communications

Goals

Provide four case studies illustrating best-in-class examples of hotel brand's internal communication strategies. For each, focus on how they maintain employee culture, how they share messages with different employees (front desk, cleaners, cooks, executives, etc), and how they communicate digitally.

Early Findings

Hampton at Hilton Worldwide

  • Hilton Worldwide has 13 brands with 4,600 hotels globally. They employ 300,000 team members. The Hampton brand is the largest, accounting for 2,100 hotels.
  • The unique challenge in internal communications for Hilton Worldwide is that their properties are franchised (Hilton only owns one of the 2,1000 Hampton-branded properties). Therefore, the internal communications focuses on sharing information about the Hilton brand and "inspir[ing] personalities to shine."
  • Since the brand is global, they focus a lot of energy and time on translating content for employees, and try to use visual aids as much as possible.
  • In order to communicate with different types of employees, Hampton focuses on communicating to all the "links in the chain". If the Hampton brand wants to provide a message to maintenance staff, they must also relay that message to all the employees in direct supervisions of maintenance staff, including hotel managers and owners, in order for the message to fully resonate and be enacted.
  • The Hampton brand hosts regular, in-person events for General Managers. At these events they have used mascots, iconography, and artwork to re-enforce their brand values.
  • Hampton also uses external social media to communicate directly with employees. The reason for using social media is that many of their staff members do not receive company emails and e-newsletters because they do not have company email addresses (for example, housekeeping staff does not work at a computer and does not receive internal emails). Therefore, Hampton leverages external social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to connect specifically with those employees.
  • As part of this social media, they use the hashtag #Hamptonfact (FACT is the acronym for the Hampton values), where employees from Hampton's all over the world can share images and stories of them living out these values.
  • Hampton also has a weekly newsletter for employees called Hampton Now, and an intranet site called The Lobby (powered by SharePoint). On their intranet, staff can share questions and tips for handling all types of situations, from customer experience to hotel maintenance.