Choice Hotels Bets on Value-Led Travel with More of What You Value
Choice Hotels' 2026 campaign, "More of What You Value," is a film-led brand platform created with ad agency 72andSunny and media agency dentsu X, launching across the United States on January 20, 2026, that repositions hotel value not as a price proposition but as the enabler of more meaningful travel moments.
The campaign marks a strategic evolution for Choice Hotels International (NYSE: CHH), shifting consumer attention away from transactional lodging decisions and toward the emotional and experiential returns a stay can unlock. Rather than leading with room rates or amenity lists, "More of What You Value" asks travelers to consider what a well-chosen hotel stay makes possible — greater comfort, flexibility, and memorable time spent doing what matters most. The campaign spans the full Choice Hotels portfolio, with specific appearances by Comfort Hotels, Cambria Hotels, and the Choice Privileges loyalty programme, according to Investor Choicehotels.
In the United States, the campaign runs across linear television, connected television, digital platforms, and social media, with placements secured in entertainment and sports programming, most notably college basketball, as reported by investor.choicehotels.com. Executions include 30-second and 15-second commercials, supported by organic and paid social content distributed across Choice Hotels' and talent partner Keegan-Michael Key's Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snap, and TikTok channels, per investor.choicehotels.com. The campaign is planned to run throughout 2026, giving the platform sustained presence across the full travel booking cycle. With a Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100, the work demonstrates clear strategic coherence and strong talent integration, though its creative distinctiveness relative to category rivals leaves room for further differentiation.
Modern US travelers are rethinking what hotel value actually means. The insight driving "More of What You Value" is that today's traveler prioritises purposeful, enriching experiences over simply securing a low nightly rate — and Choice Hotels positions its portfolio as the vehicle for unlocking those experiences. This reframes the brand not as a budget alternative but as a facilitator of what travel is actually for.
The competitive context in the United States is crowded and consolidating. Marriott International, which holds the largest global room share, launched its own emotional travel platform "Travel Shapes Us" as a global brand campaign, per Mordor Intelligence, signalling that the industry's largest players are all competing on meaning rather than margin. Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, another direct scale competitor in the value hospitality segment, continues to press its own loyalty and value messaging across US markets. Against these rivals, Choice Hotels uses "More of What You Value" to claim a specific emotional territory: the idea that value is measured not by what you save but by what your stay enables.
The global hotel market is a growing and competitive arena. According to mordorintelligence.com, the sector is expanding at a compound annual growth rate, with occupancy globally estimated at approximately 64 percent in 2025, representing around 4.77 billion occupied room nights per kenresearch.com. In the United States, where Choice Hotels operates the majority of its properties, the battle for loyalty programme enrollment and repeat bookings is intensifying. Dentsu X's involvement in media planning reflects Choice Hotels' commitment to reaching the right traveler segments across both mass-reach broadcast environments and precisely targeted digital channels, ensuring the value message lands with the audiences most likely to respond.
Keegan-Michael Key anchors the creative execution of "More of What You Value" for the third consecutive year. His continued presence as both campaign talent and creative collaborator gives the platform an unusual degree of continuity for a hospitality brand operating in a category where spokesperson relationships are often short-lived.
Ad agency 72andSunny, the New York-based creative partner on the campaign, built the work around a narrative mode that uses Key's natural warmth and comedic timing to make value feel personal rather than promotional. The campaign's 30-second and 15-second film executions, per investor.choicehotels.com, are structured to move quickly through emotional storytelling — anchoring abstract concepts like comfort and flexibility in the kind of specific travel moments that audiences recognise from their own lives. Key himself articulated the campaign's human core, stating, as reported by reel360.com on January 20, 2026, that some of his fondest memories stretch from childhood onward, grounding the campaign in genuine biographical resonance rather than scripted sentiment.
Noha Abdalla, Chief Marketing Officer at Choice Hotels International, described the strategic intent behind the creative, stating, as reported by reel360.com: "Our campaign reflects how people are thinking about travel today." She further noted, per reel360.com, that as Choice Hotels continues to grow its global footprint, the campaign demonstrates how the brand gives guests more ways to get what they value on a trip, offering comfort, flexibility, and meaningful experiences across the portfolio. The inclusion of specific Choice Hotels sub-brands — Comfort Hotels, Cambria Hotels, and the Choice Privileges loyalty scheme — within the creative executions ensures the narrative platform also serves a direct portfolio awareness function, connecting the broad emotional message to concrete booking choices available to US travelers in 2026.
Quantified campaign performance data for "More of What You Value" beyond initial distribution metrics is not yet publicly available at the time of publication, given the campaign's January 20, 2026 launch date. The earliest available engagement signal, according to adsoftheworld.com, shows the campaign's primary 30-second film asset registering 957 views and 8 likes on its platform listing, figures consistent with a newly released work in an early indexing phase rather than an indicator of total reach across linear television, connected TV, and social distribution.
Structurally, the campaign is built for sustained performance. A planned full-year 2026 run, per investor.choicehotels.com, means the platform is designed to accumulate reach across multiple travel booking windows — spring break, summer, and the autumn travel season — rather than generating a single burst of awareness around one moment. The inclusion of college basketball placements in the United States targets a high-engagement, brand-safe broadcast environment with demonstrable audience scale during the winter and spring months.
The decision to retain Keegan-Michael Key for a third consecutive year, as documented by investor.choicehotels.com and reported by reel360.com, reduces creative risk and deepens brand-talent association, a compounding asset that typically improves recall metrics over multi-year deployments. The cross-platform social strategy, activating both Choice Hotels' owned channels and Key's personal audience on TikTok, Instagram, Snap, Pinterest, and Facebook, per investor.choicehotels.com, extends the campaign's earned media potential beyond paid placements. The Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its value proposition with clarity and craft, while noting that the creative ambition does not yet fully stretch beyond category conventions in US hospitality advertising.
"More of What You Value" is Choice Hotels' 2026 brand campaign, created by ad agency 72andSunny and launched on January 20, 2026 in the United States. It repositions hotel value as a gateway to meaningful travel experiences rather than a price-led proposition, running across television, connected TV, digital, and social media throughout 2026, per investor.choicehotels.com.
72andSunny served as the creative ad agency on "More of What You Value." Dentsu X handled media planning and buying for the campaign. Both agencies collaborated with Choice Hotels International on the January 2026 launch, distributing the work across linear television, connected television, digital platforms, and social channels in the United States, according to investor.choicehotels.com.
Keegan-Michael Key stars in the campaign. This marks his third consecutive year as Choice Hotels' campaign talent and creative collaborator, per investor.choicehotels.com. Key's involvement extends to social media activation across his personal Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snap, and TikTok channels, amplifying the campaign beyond Choice Hotels' own owned and paid media placements in the United States.
The campaign runs on linear television, connected television, digital, and social media across the United States. Placements specifically include entertainment and sports programming, with college basketball featured as a key broadcast environment, according to investor.choicehotels.com. Social distribution spans Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snap, and TikTok through both Choice Hotels' brand channels and Keegan-Michael Key's personal accounts.
Choice Hotels has run consecutive annual campaigns since at least 2023. The 2023 "Where Travels Come True" campaign starred Zooey Deschanel and was created by McKinney, per investor.choicehotels.com. "More of What You Value" continues the brand's storytelling approach while shifting focus from booking ease to experiential value, reflecting what CMO Noha Abdalla described as how people are thinking about travel today, per reel360.com.
The campaign features Comfort Hotels, Cambria Hotels, and the Choice Privileges loyalty programme, according to investor.choicehotels.com. Their inclusion within the 2026 film executions ensures the broader emotional value platform connects directly to specific bookable brands within the Choice Hotels portfolio, giving US travelers concrete options tied to the campaign's overarching travel values proposition.
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