Client
Hand Picked Hotels is a collection of 17 luxurious country house hotels in outstanding locations across the UK, owned by former City lawyer Julia Hands. The hotels are all former private country houses, offering an indulgent escape in stylish surroundings, with exquisite food and wines, and with some hotels offering spa and health club facilities.

Objective
Four was appointed in July 2007 to raise the profile of the Hand Picked Hotels brand, highlighting the individual character of each hotel, to boost bookings and to drive traffic to its website, through spa and leisure breaks and business, meetings and events. As part of the corporate activity, Four has also focused on raising the business profile of Julia Hands.

Solution
A combined property, lifestyle and travel team at Four has focused on an intensive media relations campaign across national, regional, local and trade media, arranging media visits, one to one interviews, competitions and promotions, using creative approaches such as “beat the credit crunch” incentives for conference bookers, to focusing on awards, regional produce and fine wines, individual spa offerings and reasons to visit a hotel because of its location and proximity to visitor attractions.

Results
Sustained, outstanding media coverage across national travel supplements, lifestyle magazine, the business pages of the national media and trade media has played a key part in driving bookings, driving traffic to the website and increasing the database for promotional based activity through partnership activities with other brands such as Country Life magazine, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph.