5W Case Study

The Buckingham Hotel




As the speed of information - namely, hotel locations, amenities and prices - travels faster than ever, hotels are looking for new ways to stand out from the crowd. In order to break through the clutter, 5W Public Relations created a series of extreme packages for The Buckingham Hotel, a boutique hotel in New York City, that garnered top-tier national press coverage and put the formerly obscure hotel on the map.

What's an "extreme" package? While formulas vary in their spices and seasonings, the basic ingredients remain the same: lavish lodgings, extravagant activities, and a monster price tag. 5W Public Relations set the bar on these packages and created a phenomenon in the industry, yielding more and more properties to jump on the bandwagon.

The Buckingham Hotel in Manhattan is heralded as a pioneer for these outrageous getaways. Packages 5W created for the hotel - including a $150K Christmas Key to the City package and a $15K Ultimate Orchid Adventure Package in 2007, and a $75K Christmas Tree Lighting and a $150K Valentine's Day package in 2006- made the front page 4 times in a row. Media outlets that featured these stories include The New York Daily News, The New York Times, The New York Post, Fox 5 News and WCBS Radio, among others.

Features of these packages included staying in Buckingham's famed penthouse and experiencing the best of what New York City has to offer. From a private G4 jet and a luxurious dinner at The Sea Grill to a shopping spree at FAO Schwartz and orchestra tickets to The Nutcracker, these packages offered guests the opportunity to experience once in a lifetime luxuries, with signature mementos.

Travel + Leisure for example picked up on the extreme package trend, highlighting The Buckingham Hotel's $15K "Ultimate Orchid Adventure" as one of the premier extravagant packages of 2007.