In the fourth season of About the Journey, the flagship podcast of Marriott Bonvoy, we turn inward to ask how travel nurtures our connection to ourselves and communities – and ultimately, transforms us. The goal: Increase awareness and consideration of Marriott Bonvoy as a brand that creates nurturing and impactful experiences for travelers.
In order to show listeners how they can create nurturing and impactful experiences through Marriott Bonvoy, we used insights, podcasting trends and best practices including the following:
Focused on listener promise to capture listener attention early in the podcast to deepen engagement.
Focused on YouTube as a channel and video as a format given statistic that 48 percent of podcast consumers are discovering new podcasts via YouTube and 75 percent of podcast consumers expect podcasts to be available via audio and video.
Featured in-destination episodes to highlight hotels within the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio as entry points to nurturing experiences as well as chat-style episodes to highlight current travel trends and Marriott Bonvoy tips in a popular podcast format.
Created 18-20 minute docu-style episodes in four destinations (Sedona, New Orleans, Maui and Mexico City) and two chat-style episodes featuring influencers in solo and family travel.
Executed paid media push via YouTube, Spotify and host reads on like-minded podcasts.
Season 4 of About the Journey has accrued:
More than 116,000 hours of watch and listen time (to date), with minimal paid spend
Nearly 936,000 video views to date
Average watch time per episode over 8 minutes on YouTube, more than 3x the internal benchmark, and over 16 minutes of listen time on podcast platforms
