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Hotel Marketing Strategy: How to Maximize Awards Season Wins

May 14, 2025

And the winner is…

Fabulous amenities and click-heeled service, trendy culinary and cutting-edge wellness, innovative sustainability, and versatile meeting spaces. Whatever strokes of excellence a hotel or resort offers guests, there is nothing like an award to trumpet them to the world. But deserving and actually receiving awards are two different bridges that travel brands need to cross. Fortunately, FINN Partners offers hotel marketing strategy expertise and resources to get clients over to the winning side.

Like the media that distribute them, travel awards are ever-changing. Those from Conde Nast Traveler and Travel + Leisure have long been the biggest fish to catch. But others are significant, too, among them The World’s 50 Best, which started with restaurants and now also honors bars and hotels; the venerable Michelin Guide, which began awarding “Keys” to outstanding hotels in 2024; and Men’s Health, whose Travel Awards debuted in 2023.

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Among key differentiators FINN Partners brings to client campaigns is the agency’s Media Intelligence team. Launched to monitor the media landscape and cultivate productive relationships with editors, the Media Intelligence team also builds and maintains a master list of award opportunities to keep account teams on top of award categories and deadlines relevant to their clients.

As deadlines surface and inevitably approach, account teams take initiative to ensure that clients are on the media outlet’s radar, from sending well-crafted pitches to arranging desk-side visits with editors known to be covering applicable categories. For instance, when CNT began putting together its Changemakers ’23 feature on industry leaders shaping travel, the account team for Wilderness drip-fed details of its client’s innovations on sustainability to CNT editors, and CEO Keith Vincent made the cut and the piece.

For awards in which winners are chosen by readers, such as T+L’s World’s Best and CNT’s Readers’ Choice, account teams start by engaging editors about clients to ensure that as many properties as possible from multi-property hotel brands appear on the ballots. 

Then account teams work directly with clients to increase their odds, from providing updates on opening and closing dates for voting, to encouraging clients to get word out on their nominations via features on social media channels or dedicated email blasts to former guests. Teams will also reach out regularly to editors, from meeting for drinks to inviting them on press trips for real on-site experiences, all to enhance the likelihood that properties will be front-of-mind when the editors start working on the awards.

“Awards and accolades are at the heart of what we do because they shine a light on the exceptional experiences our clients create,” shares Vice President Christina Gnozzo. “We take a hands-on, collaborative approach, working closely with both our team and our clients to identify and target the opportunities that truly matter—whether that’s securing industry-leading awards or earning a spot on those highly sought-after ‘best of’ lists. By nurturing relationships with the writers and editors behind these recognitions and strategically amplifying voter-driven nominations, we ensure our clients stand out where it counts most.” 

In the end, a hotel marketing strategy for an award win can really be worth a client’s effort and budget. The brand recognition that comes with an award is value-added, and typically includes the opportunity to purchase and display award icons on press releases, social media channels, even the front doors of restaurants or hotels. 

Boasting rights, meanwhile, are complimentary.