The Power of a Cookie
Hilton’s Doubletree hotels give every guest a warm chocolate chip cookie when they check in. Each day, they hand out a whopping 75,000 cookies to their guests. What’s interesting is that 34% of these guests go on to tell their friends about this sweet gesture.
As a result, there are 25,000 stories being told about Doubletree hotels every day because of these cookies. And the best part is that it only costs Doubletree 20 cents to make one cookie.
The strategy of giving away a cookie has led to
1. Memorable Customer Experience
Providing a small, unexpected treat like a warm cookie can have a big impact on the overall experience for guests. It shows that the hotel cares about making guests feel welcome and comfortable.
2. Word of Mouth and Marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful tool. When guests tell their friends about the cookie, it acts as free, positive advertising for the hotel along with a positive brand image. This can lead to more people considering Doubletree for their stays.
3. Low Cost, High Impact
The cost of making a cookie is relatively low (only 20 cents per cookie). This practice demonstrates that creating memorable experiences for customers doesn’t always have to be expensive. Sometimes, small gestures can go a long way.
4. Repeat Business
Guests who have a positive experience at a Doubletree hotel, often linked to the cookie, may be more likely to choose Doubletree for their future stays. This can lead to customer loyalty and repeat business.
5. Competitive Advantage
Practices like this can set Doubletree apart from competitors in the hospitality industry. It highlights the importance of finding unique ways to differentiate your business in a crowded market.
6. Customer Satisfaction
Small gestures that make guests happy can contribute to high customer satisfaction scores and positive online reviews, which can attract more guests in the long run.
This is how a cookie turned a hotel chain into a $38,000,000,000 billion-dollar empire.
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That cookie has been my lunch many days. Wife hates them, so good for me!
I didn’t read this post but did you know you can go back at any time during your stay and ask for more cookies??
this is do dumb
I’ve stayed at Doubletree many times and never received a cookie.
K
It works. My family used to go to DoubleTree’s we didn’t even stay at when on vacation just to get the cookies. And we always asked for a shit ton too. Never rejected and never asked us for proof that we stayed there.
20+ years later I am still telling people about how we used to freeload their cookies. I even told this story to my girlfriend just last month.
yes
i’ve stayed at several doubletree’s, these hasn’t been a cookie
I have an idea that I think would work twice as well as this. This might be a great idea for someone in marketing. What if a hotel would offer 2 cookies for each guest? In doing so, it would be giving customers a super-duper memorable experience, not just a memorable experience. I’m not an expert in marketing, so please don’t downvote this if you think the calculus doesn’t work here.
While ingredient cost may truly be $0.20, the operational impact cost of delivering it at proper serving temperature and freshness dwarfs the ingredient cost. It also becomes a single point of failure to meet expectations and the loss of goodwill as price of that failure is huge.
I used to coach girls basketball teams. For away tournaments they asked if we could stay at the hotel with the cookies. The cookies absolutely drive business to the chain. Even now if faced with a choice I will choose doubletree hoping for a cookie.
Someone posted that they “run out” I thought that was only me that noticed. I was like wtf cook some more if you run out that’s why I am here.
No effort chatbots
While this is not the full picture of how it became a ‘full empire’ it’s a great way to leverage worth of mouth marketing but that is half of the story, the other part is to keep up the momentum and make those customers feel great from start to end.
Sounds like the performance review of a marketing person
Sure a free cookie is a small gesture but location, quality, price, service are the actual reason you might book, and continue to use them.
I’ve stayed at a few double trees and I forgot about the cookie until I read this. It’s fairly unmemorable in the grand scheme of things.
Sounds like you’re one of the 66% that don’t tell a friend, and that’s fine. For the rest, 34% of guests telling a positive comment about the company is a good hit rate for such a cheap strategy.
God this is fucking stupid. Is there a single person in this world that wants to hear this feel good, highschoolers idea of what makes a company successful- level bullshit.
Anyone with any kind of business knowledge would call bullshit when someone says it only costs 20 cents to make one cookie.
Yeah, a lot of unknowns here. How much does it cost to distribute the cookie, ensure staff has time/willingness to warm up and provide the cookie, and then track the effectiveness of the strategy?
Would it be more effective to just give everyone a handful of singles so they can go to the strip club?
Also the biggest one is the payroll to make the cookies obviously they’re going to have to make a lot of cookies if every single guest gets one. That’s assuming that they are actually making them there. I have no clue l, just going off of what OP said. I have no clue how they would even know the unit cost of each cookie.
Totally legit. 20c led to billion in business… Ni avertissement, no financing, no lobbying… Just a single cookie.
/s
I am a recurring 2dle tree member. In Dallas, they didn’t give me a cookie when I checked in. The next day, I politely let them know. They told me that something was wrong and that they didn’t have any at the moment and didn’t know when they would be able to get it fixed. I told them how bummed I was and that I loved them. It wasn’t a big issue.
A week later, I got an email from the manager asking me if the address on file was my current address and that they were sending me a gift.
A couple of days later, I got a box with 12 dozen cookies from them with a handwritten letter saying sorry for not having cookies and thanks for my business.
I now exclusively stay there when in town.
You select your hotel based on 144 cookies that you received afterwards and a note?