CASE STUDY

M Passport

Designing the first signature family program for Marriott Hotels

Challenge

To capture a greater share of the growing leisure market in APAC, Marriott Hotels needed to shift its reputation from being viewed as reliable business travel accommodations, to desirable family-friendly destinations.

Through research, Prophet found that parents highly value the options for daily activities on their vacation. Even though Marriott Hotels across Asia were offering great activities for kids, the Marriott International brand wasn’t getting credit due to guests not attributing the programming back to the master brand. So, to win with families, Prophet needed to help Marriott Hotels boost its family hotel activities offerings and develop a clearer connection between kids activities and the Marriott International brand.

Solutions

We created M Passport, a program designed to engage and support children as they grow up while giving parents peace of mind that their children are having fun and learning along the way. M Passport is a kids-focused program that provides children with three key benefits – Brilliant Body, Brilliant Mind and Brilliant Heart aligning with the Marriott Hotel brand positioning of “Inspiring Brilliance”.

M Passport comes to life in a gift children receive upon arrival, a “passport” booklet where they collect stamps for completing activities that stimulate Mind, Body and Heart. Activities are categorized under each of the three key benefits, which have a corresponding stamp design. Stamps can then be redeemed for rewards, such as ice cream, cookies or a local souvenir. In addition to the booklet, children receive postcards to draw on and fill out stickers, and buttons to serve as souvenirs of their Marriott stay. The program is available to guests in both resort and urban properties, where the kids’ activities are customized accordingly. In resorts, many activities are done on-site, while urban properties offer a map of the city to allow exploration on property and immersion in the city around the hotel.

We designed a unique visual identity system for M Passport based on its key benefits and Marriott International’s brand positioning ‘Inspiring Brilliance’. The M Passport word mark, combined with the brand font, creates a ‘light bulb moment.’ While staying consistent with the Marriott International master brand, Prophet’s design teams added playful and fun elements through simple line illustrations that showcase local animals, icons and sceneries. The illustration style is based on the simplistic lines of the M Passport logo.

Building on the feedback and learnings from the proof-of-concept program at resorts, the visual identity system has recently been expanded to showcase a broader array of designs for urban properties, including imagery of Owen the Owl, the M Passport program mascot, on location at various historic APAC sites – from Sydney to China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and more.

Results

APAC became the first region to fully roll out this global program, beginning with a proof-of-concept in 2018, and now expanding to over 20 properties across APAC. The program has distributed over 15,000 copies of M Passport to Marriott’s little guests, generating 6,210+ M Passport package room night bookings, and driving more than 137.4 million total impressions and over 18.7 million reach. M Passport plans to roll out further across additional urban properties in 2021.

Impact

15k

Copies of M Passport delivered

6k

M Passport package room night bookings

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