Hilton Garden Inn Breakfast Promo Overshadows Charitable Giving
Hilton Garden Inn is celebrating the holiday season by offering free breakfast on weekend stays. More importantly, they are donating 400,000 meals to Feeding America during the holiday season.
The deal itself is not really very enticing to me because I already get free breakfast as a Gold member, and probably won't be enough for non-elites to change their behavior either. The lure of a free $10-20 breakfast will likely not be a big influence on someone to stay with Hilton.
On the other hand, the donation of 400,000 Meals to Feeding America is a very big deal! That is a lot of meals and will surely have a big impact on the holiday season. It's so big, in fact, that I can't believe that they aren't making a bigger deal out of it.
The email might as well be saying:
"Hey self centered traveler, we are giving away over $1 million worth of free meals to people less fortunate than you, but we know that all you care about is yourself, so we are also making sure that you get $10 in free food next time you stay with us."
If it weren't for the cute kid in the picture, I wouldn't have noticed the Feeding America tie in at all.
Be proud, Hilton. You are doing great things and shouldn't be afraid to make it the highlight of your marketing.