Halden Hotels: Leave when the light does.
The brief.
Halden was full from June to August and half empty the rest of the year. Four in ten winter bookings came through booking sites that kept up to 18% of the room rate.
Fill the dark months. Get guests to book with Halden directly.
The idea.
From October to March, checkout is at sunset.
In Bergen that means 15:19 in December and 20:13 by the end of March. The late checkout only comes with rooms booked on halden.no.
The making.
Four pieces of one idea, every one of them timed to the sun.
Posters and digital screens went up like tide tables, with tonight’s checkout time at each hotel, repainted every day in Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Hamburg.
The ads ran at sunset too. Paid social and search were scheduled by solar time in each city, so they went live as the light went, when people start planning a weekend away.
We filmed one room for one afternoon: a fixed camera in room 412 from 11:00 to sunset, the light crossing the wall, cut to sixty, fifteen and six seconds. And halden.no now opens on tonight’s checkout time, counting down to it.
What it moved.
The first winter, October 2025 to March 2026, against the winter before.
Was 41%Now 58%
Winter room nights booked direct. Because the late checkout only came with direct bookings.
Was 52%Now 63%
Winter occupancy. Because a 15:19 checkout turns one night into two days.
Was £41Now £30
Cost per direct booking. Because the ads ran when people were deciding, not all day.
Checkout
Made by
Priya Raman (strategy), Adaeze Okafor and Ines Carvalho (creative), Kwame Mensah and Lola Fernández (film), Maeve Dunleavy (out-of-home), Tomas Quist and Jonas Lindqvist (media and search) and Ruth Abernethy (the booking site).
Results are for the period stated, against the client’s own figures from the year before. Full numbers are shared in person.
project