How UGC powers consistent content across 100+ hotels

A global hospitality brand with nearly 100 hotels offers travelers unique, immersive stays that reflect the essence of each destination — from local culture and cuisine to breathtaking landscapes. But sharing these authentic guest experiences with a worldwide audience posed a distinct challenge.

To bridge that gap, the brand turned to Emplifi’s UGC solution, empowering its team to showcase genuine guest perspectives and capture the soul of its properties through real stories and visuals.

Capturing authenticity at scale

For this global hospitality brand, creating a sense of authenticity across its properties was essential. The team needed real, guest-captured moments to convey the experience of staying at their hotels in a personal, relatable way — something standard marketing content couldn’t achieve.

“Our product isn’t something you can take home or see every day… It’s an experience thousands of kilometers away. We needed content that felt real, from our guests’ perspective,” shared the Social Media Manager.

However, achieving this level of authenticity across nearly 100 locations worldwide proved challenging. Sourcing and managing content manually consumed significant resources. Even with dedicated staff, curating and obtaining permissions for a single piece of content could take hours — adding up to hundreds of hours each quarter.

“All the curation that is now handled by your team and the tools you provide—we would never have been able to handle this on our own, especially when it comes to rights management,” said the Social Media Lead.

Streamlining visual storytelling with Emplifi’s AI-driven UGC solution

With Emplifi UGC, the brand transformed its approach to social content, building a library of brand-ready visuals that captured genuine guest moments and resonated with travelers.

Using advanced AI image recognition and automated curation workflows, the team can now source and manage user-generated visuals across digital channels, request rights approvals seamlessly, and filter content by specific topics or locations.

The platform’s search functionality also brought significant efficiency:
“When we have a certain topic or any hotel we’re looking for, we can directly search in the bar—Emplifi makes it super easy to find specific content without digging through folders.”

Through Emplifi’s UGC, the brand also launched innovative guest campaigns, encouraging past travelers to share their favorite moments. One campaign alone yielded over 300 videos, enriching the content pool with engaging, authentic visuals straight from guests.

Delivering measurable business impact

Since adopting Emplifi’s UGC, the brand has seen a measurable impact on both operations and engagement. Guest campaigns have driven hundreds of high-quality submissions, helping bridge content gaps and reinforcing a consistent, authentic social presence.

Automated workflows have saved the brand hundreds of hours, freeing the team to focus on strategy, brand engagement, and creative storytelling.

“Our guests can tell our story better than we ever could. Their authentic content brings out the soul of our brand, creating emotional connections with future travelers,” said the social media manager.

With a steady stream of brand-aligned visuals directly from guests, the team now operates with greater efficiency and has built a vibrant, relatable social media presence that captures attention and builds trust.

Looking ahead

Emplifi’s UGC not only strengthened this global hospitality brand’s operational efficiency but also amplified its mission to deliver memorable, personalized experiences. By harnessing guest perspectives, the brand continues to invite travelers to see its destinations through the eyes of those who’ve experienced them firsthand.