Objective

Background

citizenM, the disruptive luxury hotel brand, is known for turning each new property launch into a major cultural moment typically through high-profile influencer events. In 2020 and 2021, they faced two unique challenges: launching citizenM Geneva in the middle of COVID-19 restrictions, and opening citizenM Bowery in the hyper-competitive New York City hotel market. The goal in both cases was the same: create immediate brand buzz and convert it directly into room bookings.

Strategy

To achieve measurable commercial results in both Geneva and New York City, The Cirqle built a bookings-first influencer playbook designed to do more than create awareness, it was engineered to fill rooms. Rather than relying on broad lifestyle content, we focused on pairing high-impact creative storytelling with direct booking pathways, ensuring every piece of content had the potential to convert interest into a reservation. This approach blended premium, on-brand visuals with rigorous performance tracking, enabling citizenM to see exactly how influencer content was driving occupancy in real time.For each opening, we:

Selected high-converting creators with proven travel and lifestyle audiences who regularly generate bookings
Hosted curated multi-night stays, ensuring content showcased not just the hotels’ design and amenities, but also the guest experience from check-in to check-out
Embedded trackable booking links in stories, captions, and bios to attribute reservations directly to influencer activity
Amplified top-performing content via paid social, targeting high-intent audiences in priority regions (short-haul for Geneva; domestic + international for NYC)
Retargeted engaged viewers with limited-time opening offers to push urgency and fill rooms quickly

Results

By combining premium creator content with precision targeting and direct booking attribution, the campaigns delivered both brand buzz and measurable revenue impact:

5–7 high-performing influencers per city generated over 40 premium assets (posts, reels, stories) designed to inspire and convert
5.4M total impressions across organic and paid distribution, ensuring the hotels dominated social conversations during launch windows
Average engagement rate of 7.5%, well above industry benchmarks for travel and hospitality content
Direct booking impact:
- Geneva: +19% uplift in direct booking inquiries within 48 hours of influencer content going live, helping the hotel meet opening-month occupancy targets despite no physical launch event‍
- Bowery NYC: 312 tracked room bookings in the first 14 days, exceeding the opening-month occupancy forecast by 27%
Sustained conversion tail: Content continued to drive bookings for several weeks post-launch, demonstrating the long-tail value of well-executed influencer assets‍
Global audience reach: 42% of Bowery’s influencer-driven bookings came from international markets, perfectly aligned with citizenM’s positioning as a global hospitality brand

Global Hotel chain citizenM went from 0 to 2,000,000 impressions in 14 days

Conclusion

The Geneva and Bowery activations proved that influencer-led launches, when engineered for conversions, can achieve (and surpass!) the commercial outcomes of large-scale physical events. The bookings-first playbook is now a core part of citizenM’s market-entry strategy for future openings.

What our clients say about us

“Adding Influencer Marketing through The Cirqle into our media mix enabled us to achieve significantly better results compared to our business-as-usual campaigns, and decrease the overall cost of media (CPA) while increasing RoAS.”

Alex Adamson

SVP of Digital Marketing

“Creator led marketing strategies are key for advertisers that want to avoid fatigue and drive performance from their campaigns. The Cirqle is instrumental for us in driving these initiatives.”

Marc Judlin

Monetization Partnerships

“At LOOKFANTASTIC, we see the creator space as a huge opportunity within our paid marketing campaigns and are delighted to have driven such strong results through our continuous work with The Cirqle.”

Cal Salvaggio

Global Head of Paid Media – Beauty

“An efficient and effective way to work with and scale influencer marketing. The briefing process for brand and influencer are both straightforward. Great overall performance management from influencer relations to reporting.”

Jaimee Hulsmeyer

Social Media and Influencer Manager

“The Cirqle's platform demonstrated its potential in terms of saving time, reducing costs, and facilitating the scaling of Partnership Ads.”

Ozge Sonmezoz

Senior Performance Marketing Manager

“Incredibly scalable social commerce platform that's ROI-driven and brings results to the business.”

Matteo Petruzzellis

Director of Digital & Sales

“We enjoyed the experience of working together on our seasonal campaign and thought the results were on par with expectations. The Cirqle does well at pushing the needle and meeting all deadlines set out at the onset of a campaign.”

Liam McGurl

Social Media Manager

Alex Adamson

SVP of Digital Marketing

Cal Salvaggio

Global Head of Paid Media – Beauty

Cal Salvaggio

Global Head of Paid Media – Beauty

We are very satisfied with how The Cirqle helps streamline and scale the process of running influencer marketing and the deployment of Paid Partnership ads.

Paulina Nordgren

Marketing Executive

“Extremely fast delivery of high-quality campaigns across our key markets with a steady stream of successful campaigns resulted in a year-long commitment.”

Alex Garcia

Sr Analyst/Strategist

“We are very satisfied with how The Cirqle helps streamline the process of running partnership ads.”

Paulina Nordgren

Marketing Executive

"Quickly adding and scaling Influencer backed Paid Partnership ads in our marketing mix was extremely easy with The Cirqle. We were able to scale spend and decrease our CPA in the 1st month by an incredibly 20%. We’re excited to keep the momentum going!"

Luke Raben

Growth Manager

“Extremely fast delivery of high-quality campaigns across our key markets with a steady stream of successful campaigns resulted in a year-long commitment.”

Alex Garcia

Sr Analyst/Strategist - Social Media

“The Cirqle helped us to quickly scale up our Paid Partnerships campaigns with almost no effort. We were able to expand our asset library with just a few clicks and drive up ROAS during peak moments.”

Arlette Coenradi

Digital Marketeer at Stoov

“The Cirqle offered a turnkey influencer strategy that allowed us to successfully execute our first-ever Affordable Care Act (ACA) Open Enrollment awareness campaign.”

Sarah Abboud

Director of Communications

We are very satisfied with how The Cirqle helps streamline and scale the process of running influencer marketing and the deployment of Paid Partnership ads.

Paulina Nordgren

Marketing Executive

“The Cirqle's focus on influencer performance is unique in the market and enabled Routinely to drive outsized returns in comparison to our own performance on social.”

Damien Poelhekke

CEO

“Extremely fast delivery of high-quality campaigns across our key markets with a steady stream of successful campaigns resulted in a year-long commitment.”

Alex Garcia

Sr Analyst/Strategist

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