"We Are Not in the Commodity Business. We Are in the Irrational Affinity Business" — Hilton’s CMO

Despite rising costs on everything from gas to groceries, U.S. consumers are still prioritizing travel this summer.

Some are travelling closer to home or choosing less expensive destinations, and about one-fifth are using loyalty points or rewards to keep costs low, according to a recent American Hotel & Lodging Association survey.

Hilton is making loyalty easier. Last month it launched a social-first campaign giving away 1 billion Hilton Honors points, opening with Instagram posts featuring Paris Hilton and Formula One star Lando Norris.

The pairing is deliberate: the brand's most famous ambassador, and a driver whose McLaren Formula 1 Team has partnered with Hilton for more than 20 years.

"It's taking their expertise and imparting it upon their fans. It's a fun way to tap into the summer narrative that's out there, but also be back in culture and conversation, in a way that's authentic to who we are, versus just doing a bunch of giveaways." — Mark Weinstein, Hilton Global CMO

"We're not in the commodity business. We're in the irrational affinity business"

The effort spotlights a Hilton Honors program with 260 million members. Extra nights, free upgrades and experiential rewards through new cruise partner Explora Journeys are key rewards, but Weinstein maintains loyalty is more emotional than transactional.

"You wouldn't want the tenth bagel for free if the first nine weren't very good. You don't win loyalty from earning points. You earn it from redeeming points. You don't earn it from earning tiers. You earn it from the value of the tiers being delivered."

Hilton's Q2 2026 system-wide comparable revenue per available room rose 3.9% year over year, and the company raised its annual RevPAR growth outlook to between 3% and 3.5% — World Cup benefits in Q3 offset by the midterm elections in Q4.

"We're not in the commodity business. We're in the irrational affinity business."

Creators: trading control for immediacy

Hilton has leaned into the creator economy, which the IAB says is on track to generate $44 billion in U.S. ad spending this year and is now a "core media channel."

Using creators requires brands to give up control over the narrative in exchange for immediacy.

"It doesn't always come out exactly how you would perfectly script it, but you're betting on the authenticity and the resonance that creator content has with their audience is enough of a benefit … that you're going to take that risk with your brand. It can be a little nerve-wracking as a CMO and a brand leader."

Early creator partners, including some micro-creators, were trying to make their own versions of TV commercials — perhaps because brand briefs were too prescriptive.

"If you want to be in those forums, you've got to trust creators to know their audience well enough to know how they'll best receive the message, and that means a little bit of tarnish sometimes."

The same trust principle applies whether the creator has 10,000 followers or 10 million.

The brand platform is what makes ceding control possible

Weinstein attributes Hilton's ability to cede creative control to the strength of its global brand platform, "For the Stay," launched in 2022.

"That's why having a brand platform matters so much: because you're no longer trying to hit it out of the park every single time. Content has never been cheaper to produce. The need to get people's attention has never been higher. If you can de-risk that environment, you actually hit some singles and doubles that turn into home runs."

AI's role: from inventory to discoverability

Weinstein oversees brand and performance marketing for 28 brands totalling more than 9,200 hotels across 144 countries and territories.

AI is first "rapidly transforming" Hilton's ability to keep room inventory up to date with accurate images and descriptions so it is bookable and advertisable.

"We have a large team of people that supports that. They were always behind the eight ball when it comes to trying to have 1.3 million rooms up to date all the time. Having technology to scale that is quite impactful for us. Not just to automate it, but actually to use the AI capabilities to help us through that."

AI is also bringing down the cost of performance marketing and enabling thousands of campaign variations that are more personalised than ever — a necessity in a category where a brand can go from irrelevant to relevant in as little as 10 seconds.

"When somebody books their hotel, that customer's gone, so our ability to use AI to respond in that moment to piece together the right asset, to ship it, to buy the media — that is a competitive game changer for sure."

The next frontier is discoverability inside AI

Beyond content creation, the next frontier of AI is discoverability across tools that in some cases are replacing search as the gateway to travel planning.

Already, more than one-third of Americans planning to travel this summer are using AI to help plan their vacations, per Allianz's Global Travel Confidence Index with polling from Ipsos.

"Suddenly, the user community talking about us sometimes matters more than our advertising."

Weinstein noted the importance of platforms like Reddit, LinkedIn and Wikipedia.

"We have to recognize that we don't control the environment in which our content is consumed. It might be being shipped out to places where the LLMs are interpreting it, responding back to it."

Hilton is testing advertising in the AI space and learning the changing rules where answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization join — and possibly supplant — search engine optimization.

"You've got to make sure you tell your narrative in a clear way, that you stay true to who you are, that you do what you've been doing before. You can't control a so-called funnel, you can't control a so-called linear process. It's being propagated all over the place. What's going to happen is going to happen."

What marketers should take from this

Measure loyalty on redemption, not accrual. "You don't win loyalty from earning points, you earn it from redeeming points" is an instruction to move the measurement point — track redemption rate and post-redemption repeat, not signups and accrued balances.

A brand platform is the precondition for ceding control. Hilton can hand the script to creators because "For the Stay" has been in market since 2022. Giving up control without a platform just produces scattered content — the same logic as The New Fundamentals of Social Brand Strategy.

Drop the "home run every time" goal. When production is cheap, the answer is not raising per-asset polish but increasing at-bats and de-risking the environment.

Understand why user conversation can outrank advertising. Data on AI's preference for earned media is covered in 82% of AI Citations Point to Earned Media — which is precisely why Hilton names Reddit and Wikipedia.

Plan around the incumbency bias. AI Models Search for Familiar Brands 3.2x More Often shows why a Hilton-scale AI discoverability experiment does not transfer directly to a challenger brand.

Treat creators as a standing capability, not a campaign line item — see Gap Turns Employees Into Influencers for the same problem solved from the inside.

Don't read "what's going to happen is going to happen" as resignation. It is closer to an instruction to concede uncontrollable distribution and concentrate resources on what remains controllable — narrative consistency, information accuracy, and freshness of inventory data.