When hotels stand out with marathon weekend activations
Marathon weekends are an incredible way for hotels to stand out and show their support for fitness.
As many hotels are located near or directly on the race courses, participants travelling in for these life-changing experiences, and hotels being able to promote themselves as community hubs, these activations can inspire your guests and drive a lot of awareness of these hotel properties.
Here’s a lovely example for the London Marathon from Westin, and scroll below to see some activations we’ve seen or would love to see:
The perfect pre-race shakeout run, the day before a marathon, is a 5km outing or so. RunGo has lots of routes created of the final 5km of marathon courses. Often marathons finish in a central location near hotels, so it is convenient for visitors. It is also an amazing way to visualize what you’ll be enduring that weekend. RunGo routes feature notifications about aid stations, turns, and course highlights.
Have someone lead this shakeout run for guests. This can be someone on the hotel team, using the RunGo route to keep everyone on track and not lost, a local RunGo ambassador, local run coach, or elite or Olympian runner
A spectator walking route, allowing people cheering to get the inside knowledge how to cut corners or take transit to see runners at multiple locations. Many hotels with RunGo programs offer these as well. Find your friends and family on the course.
Race day live tracking: to find runners on the course, with live locations, you can run with RunGo and join the event’s race live tracking, on the web, or create your individual live tracking page. Don’t get missed, and don’t be the spectator feeling anxious about missing your sighting!
A unique post-race spa session, can offer recuperation or massage, or take advantage of your own spa relaxation features
Organizing a hotel cheer station on course, often in front of the hotel property, or at a coordinated location. Cheer for all participants, and spot those from the hotel too.
Offering unique marathon swag for your running guests, like a sweat wristband, silicon band, race shirt, or socks, etc. These can also accentuate who to cheer for along the course. Go hotel team!
Create cheer posters, or offer a poster-design station, branded pom poms, and cowbells
Provide in-room wellness products, like yoga mat, percussive massager, or Normatec boots
Make available food for the race: gels, water for the run or for race morning, healthy food & beverage options, especially for the night before, and healthy snacks
Leave a note in room wishing them a great race
Host a post-race networking event in a restaurant or shared space with food and beverages, or at a finish line zone.
Provide options or information for transport back to hotel. People can be in rough shape at the end. If traffic gets congested around the finish line, some fun human-pulled vehicles can be fun and stand out.
While some of these marathon weekend activations for hotels can take effort and preparation, some are quite easy and quick to implement. Let us know @rungoapp on social media your ideas, and feel free to reach out to see how RunGo can deliver many of these for hotel guests.