“Kate empowered our regional teams to run their own campaigns—without waiting on corporate or engineering. She designed a flow that made our franchise owners more comfortable to run their own campaigns.”
Biz/Org
Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG)
Year
2016
Hospitality
Marketing UX
Product Overview
GuestConnect allowed IHG brand marketers to create, manage, and deploy personalized promotions at scale across multiple hotel properties.
Led cross-functional product team including designers, engineers, and brand stakeholders.
Unified promotion workflows across email, Wi-Fi, and on-site signage.
Created flexible tools for customizing offers by property and brand.
Balanced governance and freedom for hundreds of hotels.
Supported both global campaigns and local activations.
Product Goals
How might we enable scalable, personalized hotel promotions without overloading marketing teams?
IHG’s global properties had inconsistent tools for managing guest promotions. We built a centralized platform that let teams target the right guests at the right time.
Streamline promotion setup and approvals.
Integrate with guest profile data for relevance.
Support property-specific customization.
Reduce time from idea to live campaign.
Challenges
High variability in brand requirements and guest profiles.
Internal politics around campaign control and visibility.
Legacy tools weren’t built for multi-channel support.
Needed to balance creative flexibility with brand consistency.
Solutions
Defined campaign templates for common promotion types.
Built drag-and-drop editor for faster iteration.
Integrated content preview and approval workflows.
Delivered training tools to support rapid rollout.
Outcome & Impact
Adopted across multiple hotel brands.
Increased campaign frequency and consistency.
Reduced time to launch by 50%.
Created a new foundation for CRM and loyalty efforts.
