Budget hotels give you the freedom to do other things. If you are not paying too much for your accommodation, your budget will stretch further.

Plus, the chain has one undeniable asset: its widespread presence throughout France. With 237 hotels, it has a presence in every region so it is in a prime position to promote each and every one of them.

Our target (18-24 year-olds) has a particular preference for service-based campaigns. Simplicity and personalisation are key factors in their media consumption.

So we created a geolocated tourist guide with great ideas for spending the money they have saved on their hotel accommodation in the form of a digital guerrilla campaign with 237 geolocated posts featuring fantastic places of architectural, food and cultural interest and secret addresses in each city which has a HotelF1 hotel.

237 hotels, 237 cities, 237 geolocated posts we uploaded to Instagram proposing cultural, art, food and drink, sports and nature activities to help hotelF1 guests check out the region around their hotel.

We were able to offer a very broad choice of activities ranging from museum visits (the Musée des vieux métiers in Beauvais), local craft industries (Savon de Marseille in Marseille) and local produce tastings (scallops in St Brieuc) or visits to places of major architectural interest (Chagall’s stained glass windows in Brive cathedral).

All the activities are available on the interactive map on the brand’s Instagram account and, even better, by infiltrating the geolocation timeline. Users simply had to enter their geolocation for direct access to the city-by-city programme of events via the most recent photos or those that have received the most likes.

The results are essentially qualitative. The reaction of the travelling community was very positive with post likes and also suggesting other places to visit, thus adding to proposed activities.

One of the best outcomes was the fact the tourist information offices adopted the campaign. Not only did they support it, they promoted it, added to it and broadcast it widely on their own media, thus maximising its reach without the need for any additional expenditure.

The campaign was picked up by the press and appeared in a number of publications, specifically the local press such as Le Dauphiné Libéré (Central East), Nice matin (southwest), Le progrès (central), Ouest France (west)…

Young people’s affinity platforms such as MELTY adopted the campaign: “finally a campaign somewhere between editorial and quality social media content”.

But for us one of the best results was the general surprise to discover that hotelF1 was the name behind the campaign.