Travel site Booking.com has partnered with Madame Tussauds to offer VIP sleepovers in one of seven wax museum locations. The activation follows a successful Halloween promotion in which guests spent the night inside The San Francisco Dungeon.
Beginning March 28, Booking.com customers can book a private one-night stay for up to four people inside a Madame Tussauds museum. The $99 “Ultimate Slumber Party with the Stars” package includes VIP entry into the museum, dinner, snacks and a breakfast basket and a goodie bag filled with Booking.com and Madame Tussaud’s swag.
Guests will also be assigned a private photographer and stylist called a “selfie butler” to make sure they always look their best for photo ops. Limited tickets are available for Madame Tussauds locations in New York, Hollywood, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Orlando, Nashville and Washington D.C.
Several nights have been booked just hours after the promotion went live on Thursday.
The “Ultimate Slumber Party with the Stars” promotion comes on the heels of a Halloween promotion that Booking.com ran in San Francisco. Visitors were given VIP access to the last show of the evening at The San Francisco Dungeon in Fisherman’s Wharf, then treated to ghost stories, a séance, souvenirs and breakfast.
“We’ve had an incredible partnership with Merlin Entertainment that also runs the San Francisco Dungeon,” Todd Dunlap, managing director of Booking.com in the Americas told AList. “It was so successful we decided to take it national and have Madame Tussauds be bookable for overnight stays across the country for the very first time. This [activation] “ultimate sleepover” seemed like a natural home run for our consumers.”
Last year, Booking.com called its Experiences portal that allows guests to pre-register local happenings once they have booked accommodations. To accommodate changing plans, consumers can book experiences and only pay once the QR code has been scanned on-site.
Travel activities, which includes tours, activities and events, is the third-largest segment in travel, according to Deloitte, accounting for 10 percent of global travel revenue. Revenue generated by travel experiences is expected to reach $183 billion by 2020.
In a self-obsessed world, Booking.com’s partnership with Madame Tussauds make sense—after all, guests have been taking pictures with celebrity wax figures long before the “selfie” was even a thing.
“We know social inspiration is a big part of bookers travel decision-making process and certainly these types of experiences generate great social content,” added Dunlap. “But, we also want bookers to take action and connect them with any type of trip that might not be as Instagram worthy—whether it’s a staycation to de-stress from work, a quick trip to visit family or a weekend road trip.”
