Hyatt Offers Wake Up Calls from Christie Brinkley

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In an interesting new promotion from Hyatt for Gold and Diamond members, you can go online to www.hyattwakeup.com and schedule a personalized wake up call from a friend or family member, or choose to have a standard wakeup call from Christie Brinkley.  This strikes me as a stunningly simple and effective campaign that any hotel chain could have done, but surprisingly haven’t until now.  Wake up calls are a natural fit for hotels and offering a gimmick like this is sure to get travellers talking.  In a particularly smart move (assuming it is intentional), the wake up calls can be ordered to your home phone or cell phone – allowing you to use the service anytime, not just after spending a night in a Hyatt.  Oddly, you can’t actually use it during a hotel stay at Hyatt, because it won’t work with hotel phone systems. 

The reason I love the concept of custom wake up calls is that they are the ultimate irony in interruption marketing – marketing delivered at a moment when most consumers are actually seeking an interruption.  Attention is likely to be high (though a bit sleepy) and there is a very personal element to a wake up call.  Choosing the first thing you hear in the morning is an intimate decision, just like choosing a hotel to spend a night with/at.  The possibilities for hotel brands that understand this component of intimacy within their brands are nearly endless.  For example, with Starwood’s launch of the new Aloft hotel brand in Second Life, extending this promotion could really get fun.  Who wouldn’t order a wakeup call from Christie Brinkley’s avatar, or any celebrity for that matter?  As more smart travel brands start to focus on creating their own moments of intimacy with travellers, the role of personalization in travel marketing is likely to generate lots more creative ideas.