Conde Nast Trav­el­er, Trav­el + Leisure, etc. take note: Mar­riott is on a mis­sion to become the world’s largest pub­lish­er of trav­el con­tent. And the brand is doing so in part with a new con­tent stu­dio to con­nect with “next-gen­er­a­tion trav­el­ers” and to cre­ate so-called 360-degree expe­ri­ences.

While Mar­riott is a brand that nat­u­ral­ly inspires plen­ty of user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent and can use said con­tent to tell brand­ed sto­ries, Mar­riott also sells an expe­ri­ence it can’t always con­trol from an exec­u­tive lev­el because of fac­tors as unpre­dictable as employ­ees or con­sumers in bad moods on a giv­en day.

That’s accord­ing to feed­back from David Beebe, vice pres­i­dent of glob­al cre­ative and con­tent mar­ket­ing at Mar­riott Inter­na­tion­al, at an Adver­tis­ing Week pan­el. At the end of the day, Beebe said, when it comes to con­tent mar­ket­ing, the advice he gets from Mr. Mar­riott him­self is: “Don’t make the con­tent suck.” So how does the hotel brand do that? For one, Mar­riott uti­lizes tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide con­tent at the right moment and on the right screen, Beebe said. “When look­ing for a place to go, how do I deliv­er con­tent that’s rel­e­vant and say, ‘Oh, by the way, we sell hotel rooms, why don’t you stay with us?’” Beebe said. The brand recent­ly made a high-tech move to appeal to the next gen­er­a­tion of trav­el­ers, part­ner­ing with visu­al effects com­pa­ny Frame­store to cre­ate a 4D vir­tu­al real­i­ty trav­el expe­ri­ence with Ocu­lus Rift tech­nol­o­gy.

It also launched its own con­tent stu­dio, which will cre­ate dig­i­tal con­tent across film, tele­vi­sion, online, and print plat­forms. Mar­riott says its stu­dio includes teams respon­si­ble for: cre­ative and snack­able trav­el lifestyle con­tent; episod­ic sto­ry-dri­ven con­tent; and real-time cre­ative and con­tent around trend­ing top­ics, con­ver­sa­tions, and events on social media. That means dif­fer­ent kinds of con­tent with vary­ing lengths of engage­ment. “For us, it’s lit­er­al­ly just get­ting start­ed,” Beebe said. It’s all about pro­vid­ing “infor­ma­tion and enter­tain­ment at the right time and in the right con­text,” he added. To that end, the brand has part­nered with entre­pre­neur and trav­el vlog­ger Sonia Gil of Sonia’s Trav­els, music and move­ment group Sub­stance Over Hype, which will pro­duce an orig­i­nal short film, “Two Bell­men”; self-described media empress Shi­ra Lazar, who will bring audi­ences pop­u­lar videos, trends and per­son­al­i­ties on YouTube and social media; and musi­cal come­di­an, actress and con­tent cre­ator Taryn South­ern.

The project will also include The Nav­i­ga­tor Live, a Renais­sance Hotels TV series in dis­tri­b­u­tion on AXS TV, pro­duced in part­ner­ship with AEG, which will com­bine live per­for­mances by indie music artists dis­cov­er­ing new expe­ri­ences on the road; and Mar­riott Rewards’ Year of Sur­pris­es, a series of 12 webisodes pre­mier­ing in Octo­ber. “We’re now posi­tion­ing our­selves as the world’s largest trav­el com­pa­ny,” Beebe said. “Between our plat­form and part­ner plat­forms, we can become the world’s largest pub­lish­er of trav­el con­tent.” Beebe said Mar­riott under­stands con­sumers want to inter­act with con­tent, which dri­ves com­merce. If the brand sim­ply showed hotels or loca­tions, it wouldn’t be adding val­ue. So-called info­tain­ment on YouTube that dri­ves back to Marriott.com isn’t enough either. Instead, Mar­riott is using a total­ly dif­fer­ent approach, Beebe said. That’s because brands must cut through a lot of clut­ter and real­ize there’s a val­ue exchange in con­tent mar­ket­ing. And, for that rea­son, it’s impor­tant to think about what the con­sumer wants first, Beebe said.

At the same time, con­sumers don’t always know what they want, so brands need to leave room for exper­i­men­ta­tion, he added. Brands must also devel­op cre­ative with emo­tion­al trig­gers. “It’s test and learn, but I think we can own the entire trav­el jour­ney and we’re not afraid to go out and try it,” Beebe said. Mar­riott con­tent mar­ket­ing also includes a pre-exist­ing effort, Trav­el Bril­liant­ly, a mul­ti-year mar­ket­ing cam­paign that includes TV, dig­i­tal, and mobile adver­tis­ing, “enhanced” social media plat­forms and the Trav­el Bril­liant­ly web­site, which includes a co-cre­ation plat­form to solic­it user-gen­er­at­ed ideas. Accord­ing to Mar­riott, the cam­paign “reflects the lifestyle of the next gen­er­a­tion of trav­el­ers, who seam­less­ly blend work and play in a mobile and glob­al world.” “We co-cre­ate and curate,” Beebe said. “It’s across the trav­el spec­trum and jour­ney. It’s not just stay­ing in the hotel, it’s where to go, what to eat and the full 360-degree cycle.”