Media.Monks Goes into the Virtual World for Moxy Hotels Augmented Virtualised Experiences

This summer witnessed the launch of Moxy Hotels’ innovative campaign 'Moxy Universe, Play Beyond', which leverages the possibilities of mixed reality into an augmented reality experience in Asia Pacific by the award-winning creative company Media.Monks China, Tokyo, Korea and Singapore teams.

Established in 2014, Moxy Hotels is part of Marriott Bonvoy’s portfolio of 30 brands. It is famous for offering unconventional stay experiences to guests who are young at heart and eager for fun. Aiming to grow the portfolio in Asia Pacific, Moxy Hotels would like to seize the opportunity to celebrate and pass on the brand’s 'Play On' spirit to drive awareness in the region, while adding more fun to the hotel staying experience.

Hospitality is an industry focused on service, property or local culture-related brand experiences. At the same time, traveller expectations of brand experiences have continued to evolve. The new traveller seeks experiences that continue to shape their generational identity. They are all about boundless self-expression, and connecting with others digitally, as witnessed by the popularity of gaming culture and the explosive interest in the metaverse. Media.Monks took insight from what drove these trends, to define a new take on brand experience within hospitality.

‘Moxy Universe, Play Beyond’ was brought to life by the Media.Monks team, to create a place where people can freely express themselves, create their ideal identity and even multiple identities to connect with other young-at-hearts and create their own experiences. It also echoes the belief embedded in Moxy’s DNA - the desire and space to provide travellers with diverse ways of self-expression and build like-minded communities rooted in celebrating inclusivity. 

“This campaign is all about the enjoyment of virtualisation that Moxy could bring to their audience. We believe that bringing the virtual excitement to real life is more relevant to the audience rather than building an experience in a game world, and a great experience and value that a hotel could give to travellers,” says Eric Pang, associate creative director, Media.Monks China.

With Moxy Universe, travellers’ staying experience with Moxy starts even before they arrive at the hotel. Before arriving in-person at the hotel, travellers can create and customise their avatars, choosing from 122 features and 344 designs - depicting different skin colours, hairstyles, body shapes, props and other features - with over a billion possible unique avatar combinations, while tailor-made posters could be generated and shared on social handles. When travellers arrive at the Moxy Bar, there will be a complimentary cocktail awaiting for them. After scanning an AR marker placed at the bar counter, guests are treated to an animated welcome message - a cue to the exciting mixed reality experiences they are going to enjoy during their stay at Moxy. Travellers could also find different AR markers in the room, the gym and other key places in the hotel to unveil the interactive AR experience with the avatars that they created. Through the interactive AR experience, travellers can immerse themselves within content that enhances each of Moxy’s key spaces - all of which can be shared on social media.

“Technology should be in service of both the brand and experience. By creating this campaign for Moxy,  we hope to deliver a unique interactive AR experience that passes on the ‘Play On’ spirit of Moxy and stay true to the unconventional stay experiences that distinguishes Moxy from other hotels.” says Dixi Chern, senior business director from Media.Monks China.

“We are very excited to launch the ‘Moxy Universe, Play Beyond’ experience across all Moxy hotels in the Asia-Pacific region,” says Patricia Cheung, senior director, brands and destination marketing Asia Pacific, Marriott International. “Moxy has always challenged the status quo by inviting guests to live in the moment. With the campaign, we are bringing Moxy’s ‘Play On’ spirit to another dimension through fun, immersive experiences while creating greater connections with our guests.”

Together with the Moxy Hotels and Media.Monks team, we are pushing the boundaries of multiple dimensions from the Hotel into the Virtual World across its 12 new Moxy hotels in the region, including China (mainland and Taiwan), Japan, Singapore, Korea and Indonesia. This campaign is activated to more Moxy Hotels across the APAC region.